What Is This Feeling?

by Bibhu Padhi (September 2016)

What is this feeling taking charge

of me, in the middle of the day

and family and my erratic efforts

toward rest or sleep, far from

all that I have known or

invented? No one is around

except my body 

and an unfamiliar mind.

Nothing seems to move,

whether nearer to

where I am or beyond the hills.

The afternoon is no different

from the morning, when

I woke up late, having been

a victim of a late inducement

to sleep somewhere

much later than the middle

of the night. Someone who is

close by, retells similar stories

of unfamiliarity of a worrying kind

that happened to me in the past.

I know, she means well,

but until now, as of this line,

there is no sign of relief

from the worry, the absent mind.

Is there someone yet who might

know how such states are handled,

handled with care and accuracy?

Or is it the way most worries

end, become part of a fantasy?

Could someone answer for me?

Else, it must end, must stay here,

in this truant feeling alone and me.

 

___________________________

 

Bibhu Padhi’s tenth book of poems, Midnight Diary, has just been published. He lives with his family in Bhubaneswar, India.

 

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