Gravity's loss

[Violet]

I wrote this a number of years ago, just after having a very vivid dream, which I here tried to capture.


Gravity’s Loss


The torn went right through me,
and I was immersed in a darkness more
like space than heaven.

Still, there it was: my empathy. Standing
far beneath me. Gleaming
like a metallic figurine.

Then the gloom came.
And the small blue planet (where
my precious humanness stood,
forever hopeful)
was now quickly fading.

I lapsed. Then awoke. Dipped
in the amazement of having lost real human ground.
Only I was nothing
in the torn young faces of the many who had gone before me.
Who had gone. Their mothers crying with the anguish
of each child's last and violent moment, as here now too
resting in these deep blue sadnesses, this dark eternal grief
I carry the senseless losses
of all who had gone before me
in mine.


v i o l e t

[kwills]

That first line 'The torn went right through me,' gripped me straight away and I find myself rereading it and I can feel the violence of it.
It's not easy to describe and capture the essence of a vivid dream which seems so real and true at the time,before it tries to slip away into your subconsciousness.

'Still there it was:my empathy .'

I really like it Violet.

[Violet]

.. thank you, kwills..

[kwills]

Hee hee I've just edited my post as I had written 'I really like Violet' which I hasten to add I do! but I meant to say' I really like it Violet.'

[Violet]

.. oh, I did notice that, but thought it rather adorable..

[Cate]

I really like Violet too.

You've captured well the surrealistic feeling that comes with dreams.
Curious - in the dream did you feel pulled into this space or did you feel to have some control? One thing that stood out (and I need to re-read at least a couple more times) is that although there is a feeling of sadness and grief, you did not seem afraid.

[Violet]

.. actually, the dream was a number of years ago, though I've been sensing the dream again in reading this now..

.. I do recall waking up immersed in those deep passages of blueness.. that endless place of grief and sadness.. I think too that I might have been confronted with my own mortality in the dream, as it seems that I also might have fallen by way of some senseless seeming violence, which is why the poem ends as it does.. but I think you're right, I don't recall fear, so much as sadness.. and how small I felt among the many slain.. and even my empathy or "humanness" seemed so very small beneath me.. and was fading..

.. I don't think I felt to have control, but I was in some sense an observer.. and I don't recall seeing the violence, so much as just knowing it..

.. perhaps there are dreams where we become like souls, apart from our corporeal selves.. if so, this might well be one of them..

.. thank you for your comments, Cate..

v. xx x

[carm]

v i o l e t writes:

my precious humanness stood,
forever hopeful)…

I lapsed. Then awoke. Dipped
in the amazement of having lost real human ground.
Only I was nothing
in the torn young faces of the many who had gone before me.

Your poem in its entirety is lovely,
in its surreal inscription…
imprinted from memory!

I especially liked the quoted lines above.

thanks for the sojourn…

[Violet]

.. thank you, Carm..

v. x