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Click hereIt's serene up here by the roof
floating like a helium balloon.
Sounds of the ward so far away
around the bed of someone who
looks a lot like me,
but flatter, sheets still.
I'm poised briefly
before that final lift into space,
into a place where none can follow,
but my man, head in hands, sobs.
The gravity of love is too strong
I fall slowly, slowly,
the sheet rises.
I believe "climbing to the roof" has connotations of death, so in my mind it's about death, not an out-of-body experience. Also reinforced by the sobbing.
When he was young, he used to have out-of-the-body experiences occasionally, usually when he was trying to sleep. They were very disorienting. This poem makes him think of a Munch painting that he forgets the title of. Nice use of gravity as metaphor.
But it feels uncomfortable. You seem out of your element. I agree with Ange. Form is your thing. It seems to help organise you ideas and this is a good one. Try rewriting it in some kind of form (this idea would work as a pantoum to some degree).
I read it four times and still not am 100% that I understand it (but maybe it's not meant to be 100% clear--damn poetry is hard sometimes!). It feels to me as if it's not fully realized. Is that you in the bed? A poem that imagines the narrator's death (or near death)? (At first I thought it was a family member.) There are strong lovely images and a delicacy of wording that I really like, and yet it feels to me like it needs something more, some editing (for example, what is floating in the first lines, the roof, the narrator?). Maybe I'm just not getting it. If you agree with me (and if you don't just ignore all this!), here's an experiment: try taking this poem and rewriting it in a form rather than free verse. Since I know that is a more comfortable way for you to write, maybe something more will come out and then you can always revert it back to free verse. Just a thought Annie, but I do believe it's a keeper of a poem! xo
PS Love the title and the wordplays on gravity.