Though “First Fig” by Edna St. Vincent Millay is better suited for other purposes than “Now I lay me down to sleep. / If I die before I wake, / I pray the Lord / my soul to keep,” it has become for me a bedtime prayer:
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
I know there are other versions of “Now I lay me down to sleep” but the one I know I have always known, despite the best efforts of my parents to laugh it off. I still love the poem but believe not a word. Poetry is like that. Edna’s “Fig” too. True, the candle will not last the night, but in the morning I will ‘doubly’ light another and then another, though that depends on the supply of candles and “if I wake”— meantime, such candle-burning does give that lovely light, as she says.
So, last night as “I lay me down to sleep,” thinking of the absurdity of life, of drawing meaning from nonsense, of burning precipitously through candles in short supply, these lines came to me like a serenade from a bog (pace Emily Dickinson, "I'm a Nobody! Who are you?"):
A Bullfrog
I laugh and cry, then laugh again,
And cry— it doesn’t seem quite right,
But do you or you or you, my friends,
Know another life?
It’s really just “Another Fig” via inspirationis magistrae millay, but it served the purpose of another good night’s rest.
What prayer or poem ushers you into that sleep from which, of course, you will wake? What bedtime words spring to mind? If there are none, there’s still time to make them up.
That’s an invitation, folks, to compose yourself and send the lines to me.
Here is one I have already received from Margie Keck, burning brightly:
Burden me equally
With the sublime and the common.
The necessary honoring of both
Is an issue of utmost importance.
Leading to my spiritual awakening,
The true work of my life.