Notes About The Poem
Even when we are fundamentally fractured and stripped of our original purpose, we still possess the inherent capacity to perceive beauty, interact with the world, and exist meaningfully on our own terms.
Feeling Detached
It woke upon a field of clover, cold,
A solitary sleeve of flesh and bone,
With no commanding spine to make it bold,
No heavy heart to claim it as its own.
The fingers twitched, a reflexive embrace
Of nothing but the chill and vacant air,
It traced the grass, but could not trace a face,
And felt the sudden weight of deep despair.
"Where is the shoulder?" cried the lonely limb,
The tendons tightening with sudden fright.
The world above was vast, and dark, and grim,
And it was stranded in the fading light.
It could not walk, so it began to crawl,
An inching spider made of knuckle, palm,
Unused to steering, prone to slip and fall,
Bereft of any torso’s steady calm.
Through muddy ruts and over cobbled stone,
The five-pronged traveler pursued the road,
Mechanically moving all alone,
An orphan bearing an invisible load.
It remembered a watch that used to tick,
The golden hair that lined its forearm pale,
The warmth of fire, the striking of a match—
But all was fractured in this silent vale.
It reached a town when night began to fall,
And dragged its length along the walks of stone.
It tried to knock upon a tavern wall,
To signal it was lost and all alone.
But townsfolk passed and only saw a ghost,
A severed horror scraping at the street;
They kicked it toward the gutters at the most,
Or fled away on panicked, heavy feet.
The arm hid in an alley, shivering,
And curled into a tight, defensive fist.
It missed the art of simple delivering—
The way it used to gesture through the mist
To point out stars, or brush away a tear,
Or pull a woolen blanket to a chin.
Now, trapped inside a prison built of fear,
It had no chest to lock the sorrow in.
Days turned to weary weeks of wandering;
It learned to lift itself on fingers strong,
A strange, inverted dance of balancing,
A limb that knew it simply didn't belong.
It sought its kin in every passing shape,
It reached for statues in the public park,
Imploring stone to offer an escape,
And holding frozen marble in the dark.
It scaled a church’s high and winding spire,
Thinking the view might show its missing whole,
Fueling the last remains of stubborn fire
That flickered in its disconnected soul.
From up on high, the world was small and wide,
A tapestry of bodies moving fast,
But none turned round, or held a vacant side,
And none gave back the anchor of its past.
Descending slow, resigned to wander on,
The arm collapsed beside a quiet stream.
The hope of reattachment now was gone,
Fading away like a discarded dream.
It dipped its fingers in the running flow,
And watched the water ripple in the sun,
Accepting that the currents down below
Were just the way its story now would run.
And there it rested, humanized by grief,
Learning to love the earth it had to tread.
No longer searching for a grand relief,
It wrote its name upon the sand instead.
A lonely limb, but sovereign and free,
It blessed the world that it could still perceive,
And waved a hand at all that it could see,
Content to breathe, with nothing left to grieve.
Post Comments
Poetrysoup is an environment of encouragement and growth so only provide specific positive comments that indicate what you appreciate about the poem. Negative comments will result your account being banned.
Please
Login
to post a comment