I ask a question: Is it worth the words?




BULLDOZED AND GROUND TO DUST

 

 

I am taken back to that old house
I lived in seventy years ago.
I can only see it in my mind
Or in my memory inspired dreams
Because it no longer even stands.
I replay 'camps' in the garden
And cook wild blackberries
In a tin atop a secret bonfire.
I foster the baby chicks again.
Little fluffy yellow bundles
Huddling together under a lamp

Chirping innocently to one another.
There's 'Prince' my dog that 'ran away'
And I see him walking on a lead
The other side of the busy road.
They lied about where he went.
Today I think they were cruel.
Magnetically I'm drawn to my bedroom.
The room where I was visited
At night by various elementals
Who filled me with terror and fear.
And where I'd visit the orange planet
Where my thoughts were speeded up
And a kind of numbness filled my chest
To cause me panic and distress.
Sometimes, paralysed in sleep,
I feel that night-time dread again,
The thoughts that rush away too fast,
Or the fight to regain my limbs to flee,
And then, I open up my eyes,
And be thankful where I am today;
Feel my wife beside me in the bed.
I wonder why I go there?
When that house always felt cold:
A place devoid of something needed
To prevent it being a place of echos.
Perhaps it is just as well
It was bulldozed and ground to dust.

 

© Griffonner 2024





Poetry by Griffonner The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 53 times
Written on 2024-11-29 at 15:34

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D G Moody The PoetBay support member heart!
It is strange, how we populate our dreams and the sleepless hours, with memories often not of our liking or choosing; I thought you captured this well Allen.
2024-12-12


arquious The PoetBay support member heart!
A truly strange and ongoing phenomenon. The old ancestral home lay in ruins in mother's hamlet and from the barely visible foundation stumps I could still see my history and the shared family lore what went on there, the sight, the sounds, the scents even. In another sense it is a haunting harbinger of our finite mortality that we too shall be bulldozed and ground to dust one day. Can't win either way.
2024-12-01


Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
It's terrible. The place you were eager to leave won't leave you.
2024-11-29