Dreams in Clay

I wrote this poem around the time of Remembrance Day for school. We had to write war poems but I wanted to make mine slightly different. Usually they are written about the old wars so I wrote it on one we are fighting now in Afghanistan. I also wanted to express the more unusual emotions you’d feel when losing someone.

It is about a woman who loses her lover, and as a result goes slightly mad. She misses him intensely and doesn’t know how to show it so expresses it in slightly childish ways.

Within the poem, I particularly like the imagery of the clay figures because they are fragile and can be easily broken, the way she feels. They are generally something a child would take up, to make figures and create scenes. It is the imagery that I think perfectly expresses the emotions in her mind.

I described these emotions because whenever we describe the emotions of losing someone they are always to cry, to become introverted etc. However, these aren’t the only feelings one would experience and the woman in the poem feels more complex, complicated ones that torture from within. Maybe many people feel them, maybe they don’t; this is my interpretation of a different type of grief.

I also wanted to look at war and loss through a different angle. This is why the poem is slightly disjointed and written in a very simplistic way as it’s the way her mind was working. It shows the damage that war can do, not just to the people fighting, but those left at home.

Dreams in Clay

Hold my hand

Then let it go

Kiss my lips

And forget me.

There’s a wind that blows

It comes once a year

In its flow there’s a touch of winter and autumn

Why do I know this?

I’ve acquired the habit of making tea

Place a teabag in a mug

Add boiling water

And watch the colour change

Then add milk or sugar

Everyone knows how to make tea

But my mind is like a child's without you

There’s a path that wanders through a wood

It carries on for miles

Then stops

You have no option but to turn back

I still walk along it twice a day

I wonder why

I know why

But I won’t tell myself

I’ve acquired the habit of crafts

I make tiny men

Out of clay

Then dress them in hand-stitched garments

Create scenes from cardboard

Then I act out plays

I laugh with myself

Pretend I’m laughing with you

There’s one, it’s my favourite

There’s a couple

They are strolling through a wood

On a path they’ve travelled before

When it stops

He stops; the man

He turns his small grey body

And whispers:

‘Hold my hand

Then let it go

Kiss my lips

And forget me.’

The girl does not understand what he is saying

But his eyes make her cry.

Do you remember that scene?

It was our last together

And on that day it was raining

I don’t know why I remember the rain

You left me

You walked away

You never came back

Lost on the empty plains of Afghanistan

Hold my hand

Then let it go

Kiss my lips

And forget me

I will never forget you

But this is the last poem

I will write for you

I held your hand

Now I let it go.


Minnie Moo