Under the Covers

My bed takes me through the wonderlands
like a bullet train on a busy night. It disconnects me
from the world. What feels like 30 seconds
is actually 12 hours. Where I am
I know. Where I was
is a mystery. So I drive on,
drive on for tomorrow and wake up
at the beginning of it all.

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This poem was awarded First Place (Secondary) for Poetry Object 2015

Judge's Notes:
"I love the boldness of this poem, and its restraint too. There is not a word out of place, and not a clichéd word either. In its eight lines this poem covers a great distance. With great clarity, with familiar words, it brings home a sense of mystery and strangeness. It does so not least through its brilliant use of line breaks: ‘Where I am/ I know. Where I was/ is a mystery.’ Only a full stop stops that line reading: I know where I was. This is how subtly this poem works to disrupt our sense of familiar things: it puts that full stop in the middle of an ordinary phrase, and shows its mystery. One of the advantages of using so many one-syllable words is that it allows for great rhythmic control and variation. This is a poem that controls pacing. Its short sentences and short lines not only allow those brilliant line breaks to do their work. They also allow the poem to open out emotionally as it ends. In keeping with this poem’s rich sense of paradoxes and mysteries, it ends with a beginning. This is clearly the work of a gifted poet."
~Lisa Gorton