Suzanne J. Doyle

Some Sleep Deeper

Lean as the whippets you would keep and strung
Taut as some ancient huntress’ bow,
You move to stretch your long, tormented bones
And dream the barren country we both know.

The altars there receive the very young
Who lust after the purity of stone:
The dry creek bed of seasons passed alone,
Atoning for a crime that’s not your own.
But something lies in wait and lures you on,
Along the subtle path that keeps you narrow,
And there, before your own lithe arm is drawn,
Swift beauty rifts you cleaner than an arrow:
The small song of a thrush dies in the brake,
The snake recoils its colors in the cave,
The saffron light a bend of willows shake
Abandon you to all the life you crave.

Beside me now you burn, white as the moon,
Prepared for some sleep deeper than I dare,
While I insist you’ll grow to love me soon,
Forgetting all I know of being there.






Suzanne J. Doyle was born in St. Charles, Missouri on March 3, 1953. In 1975 she graduated with honors in English from the University of California at Santa Barbara, where she studied under the poet Edgar Bowers. After being accepted to Stanford University’s Creative Writing Program in the fall of 1975, she received her MA in 1978. She has published the following slim volumes of verse: Sweeter for the Dark (1982), Domestic Passions (1984), Dangerous Beauties (1990), and Calypso (2003). For more than 25 years Suzanne has made her living writing and editing for high-tech clients in Silicon Valley, California.