Lost at Sea
The sea wrenched him open, entered him
until he was separate no longer,
sent him on the current-road
to the far meeting of air and water.
As he dissolved into the great ocean
his limbs twined with those of other creatures
to form compound monsters,
combing the deeps with cloudy fingers.
I heard the waves whisper,
but their message was unclear.
Myriad voices murmured stories
washed white as bone.
I tried to hold him with dream-slow hands,
but the tide pulled him onward.
Adrift, shifting, shape-changing, lost to me.
by Nancy Gandhi
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Categories: Water
I love the use of the ocean imagery to point to the intangible, to the permanence-impermanence of all things/people. My favorite line is “to form compound monsters.”
This is a beautiful, haunting poem.
I dig the lack of separation, then the very human emotional response of feeling loss. The compound monsters is my favorite line as well. I think of embryos and fetal development, a child swimming within the womb, Eliot’s mermaids singing in the background, a pouring out to (a)void that human separation, but the loss to her left behind, a metaphysical failure–for him to differentiate, to be with her, but oh, the depths. A pregnancy, not carried to term……
Lovely, poignant, w/ depth and worth putting out in the world.
Mil gracias.
A note of appreciation. And of acknowledging similarity. I happened upon your blog when searching for Megh Doot and read a little. Most comforting. We are similar I think. But you’re a fuller version. Thank you for the idleness and emotionalness and demonstrating their coexistance. Thank you for echoing me. I felt less alone, though not in company. But in sharing something ungraspable. Thank you very much. If you ever feel like it, though I do not know why you might, I’m found at yahoo dot co dot uk,sunnymang0(thats a zero at the end there). Sonia