Melancholia

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem 

The dreams reach out as branches from the trunk

And try to scratch the brain from far inside.

More bark-clamped than a deep-celled troubled monk

With blood on beads of rosary, blood dried

From far too many years of penitence,

The branches do their brooding.  Like a mare

Who wants to say she’s sorry, tongue to tense

With lack of words, her ignorance that prayer

Can never overcome, the limbs are trapped

In silence like the Trappist monk’s.

A forest full of leaves with sadness sapped

Is more like nightmares sealed in shadow trunks.

  Despair dwells deep in dreams, if dreams there are.

    Depression is a long-term, unhealed scar.

~ Phillip Whidden

by phillipw | Aug 27, 2024 | BI, CH, CL, DE, ME | 0 comments