The Relativity of Conscience

The Relativity of Conscience

Sometimes
I wake in the middle of the night
The day's concerns
elbowing in
Too forceful to allow
sleep

Perhaps this happens
because there is no room 
in the daytime world
To slow down the action,
Re-work the outcome,
Say what I really want
or mean to say,

But here in the long
empty hours
Without tasks or distractions,
Only the sleeping cat at my feet
I can replay
The bills I haven't paid,
The meeting I was supposed to arrange, but haven't
The stupid argument with my neighbor,
The hurtful comment I let slip,
The visit I didn't make to a grieving friend,

Only in that dark, dream border
Can I sometimes,
put things right,
Though not always.

If I am truly fortunate,
I find the words, or
Decide on the path
that can bring me to resolution
in the light of day.
Then, I can fall unresisting,
down into deep,
unthinking
slumber.

Sometimes I can only
Change the replay in my mind.
In a waking dream, imagining
the might have been,
letting it carry me to
uneasy slumber,

I wonder
How do the men
Who caused financial ruin among thousands of families
through accounting games.
Who took the bribe for the
shoddy building that collapsed on school children,
Ordered the bombing of a residential neighborhood,
get back to sleep at night?

Do they build painstaking,
waking dreams of a better world?
or do they simply
Sleep untroubled
through someone else's shattered
night?