and there is a fear...

Gotta love this poem:


Love is a Terrible Thing

I went out to the farthest meadow, I lay down in the deepest shadow;
And I said unto the earth, "Hold me,"
And unto the night, "O enfold me,"
And unto the wind petulantly I cried,
"You know not for you are free!"

And I begged the little leaves to lean
Low and together for a safe screen;
Then to the stars I told my tale:
"That is my home-light, there in the vale,
"And O, I know that I shall return,
But let me lie first mid the unfeeling fern.

"For there is a flame that has blown too near,
And there is a name that has grown too dear,
And there is a fear . . ."

And to the still hills and cool earth and far sky I made moan, "
The heart in my bosom is not my own!
"O would I were free as the wind on wing;
Love is a terrible thing!"

Grace Fallow Norton


The thing that separates this work from your usual, "I'm in love, it sucks, waaaaaah" kind of poem, is the line, "and there is a fear..." You can just feel a cold wind blow over the whole poem when you read it. Losing love is sad, bittersweet; it's many things, but it's also scary. Will you ever find it again? And if you've been replaced, there's a horrible pit of fear in your stomach, I mean, if you're replacable, why are you here at all? Are you replacable to everyone else too? The thing that romantic love gives you is a sense of being intrisically, individually important - people have many friends, but most choose one lover. Suddenly your stock, in the world, has gone down.

Right before I went to bed last night, I watched a country video for Gary Allen's remake of Vertical Horizon's "Grey Sky Morning", in which an odd Ophelia-type lady in a boat keeps sailing toward the singer guy. The song describes the guy being "haunted", and the apparition in the video seems to come from that line. So last night, I dreamed of a little girl who looked like something out of a horror movie, with dark tangled hair, a white dress, and huge dark-circled eyes, whom I was trying to take care of. She reminded me of the girl in a poem I wrote - here's a part:

"Do not think you can recover from a broken heart
It does not grow back together like skin
A little black hole remains
A wide-eyed child in the corner of your memory
No longer innocent
No longer lost

The haunting begins
Sometimes laughing
Sometimes playing tricks with your mind
But a love pulled so violently from this world
Won’t let her name be forgotten"