Poem Therapy: Bed in Summer -Robert Louis Stevenson

Bed in Summer
Robert Louis Stevenson

In winter I get up at night
And dress by yellow candle-light.
In summer, quite the other way,
I have to go to bed by day.

I have to go to bed and see
The birds still hopping on the tree,
Or hear the grown-up people’s feet
Still going past me in the street.

And does it not seem hard to you,
When all the sky is clear and blue,
And I should like so much to play,
To have to go to bed by day?

It doesn't make sense at all to me that the speaker of the poem, or Robert, felt the need to go to bed at all in the summertime. When the sun is shining, the birds hopping, I have to be right out there with them, or, at least watching them from the comfort of my bed.

I will confess, I have recently become a bed dweller.

Not the kind that lies in bed all day and night. The kind that has discovered the bed is the most comfortable piece of furniture. The kind that writes, reads, paints, creates, and yes, lounges a bit, on the bed.

I remember reading that Mark Twain, Colette, Walker Percy, Edith Wharton, Anais Nin, Proust and James Joyce all wrote sitting on their beds. Joyce spread his notes all over Nora's bed, and Colette called her bed a raft. I completely understand the impulse to write from bed.

It's been a slow progression from my studio, to the guest room, to the kitchen table, to the bed. I think I've finally settled on the bed because of the number of windows and the quality of light in the room, especially since the addition of French doors to the west.

I used to use a wooden breakast tray as my writing desk, but have since purchased a small sewing table, (the kind where the machine is inside and pops up), as a desk when I'm wriing on my computer. I write longhand sitting on my bed.