Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

I fall asleep easily these days. 

The salt light shortens and lengthens, projects 

especially shadows and I imagine myself 

a 1950s baby, overwrapped in a perambulator 

with its bouncing chassis, in an autumn garden, 

a muffler, a plaid blanket, a shawl 

of crochet squares of red and orange and brown. 

A passing of clouds over the sun 

sends a chill to fingertips, over-peeping the blanket, 

grasping and curled. I imagine my 1950s mother, 

breathing Craven A smoke through her nose, 

red-tipped second finger taking the tobacco grain 

from her tongue, feeling small rain and judging 

just how damp from the slow flap of the washing 

and the red apple-flush of sleep in my cheeks; 

just how long.