For the Sleepwalkers by Edward Hirsch

This poem is a really fun and thoughtful one.  We really do need to trust our hearts.  They are usually right.  Even though sometimes they can lead you into a wall, they usually lead you right back to your bed after an adventure.  I wonder what it is like to sleepwalk.  I wonder what sleepwalkers think or if they even do, but they must have some consciousness because like Hirsch says, they don’t run into things and they usually know their path. 

My older brother, Zach, used to sleepwalk.  I don’t think he does anymore but he used to talk and walk in his sleep constantly.  He would go to bed early and if you would make the slightest noise like hitting the table or anything he would start a conversation with himself.  It was so funny, we should have recorded it.  There was this one time when he walked out the back door, over the the neighbors, knocked on their door at like three in the morning, and looked in their window.  My step-dad was watching the whole thing because he heard the back door slam.  What made it really funny was he was in his boxers the whole time.  Wes, my step-dad, said he looked through the front door window because he locked himself out.  Wes let him in and started yelling asking what he thought he was doing and he must have lost his mind.  All Zach could say was that it was really cold outside and then walked to bed.  He had no recollection of it in the morning and laughed as hard as we did when Wes told us.