Emptiness Poem by Charles Tiffin Clegg

Holes and empty space
Nothing lives inside
A cavity with no echoes
Can't find the sides just dark
Falling yet still floating
No bottom deep inside
That's a terrifying thing
Has all the life just gone?
The babies' terror screams
Mothers come to love and help.
If they don't come before we are much older
We learn to move immediately
To the most exciting things
Sensations and rapid motions
extinguishes the fear right now.
Babies can only cry out loud
For babies there is hope.
Adults who carry emptiness get lost
They get drunk seek out new hot liaisons
Exciting touch in place of love
Sensations rule the day
ingesting too much food
or getting drunk or high.
Mothers love your babies
hold them close to you
fill that emptiness with love
hold them when they cry
food is not the answer
it's touching mothers body.
Do it when they're very young
before they get to drive
or teenage years will seem insane
and never stop their total lives
Hugging, touching, holding long
These run the terror out
This for babies vulnerable
Its love replacing emptiness
Or it's the hell of being young
and all of us remember which
forever in our depths
the memories of mothers love
or the nothingness of death.
It started as we screamed so loud
but it's fixed by mothers love.
Not all mothers get it though
The terrifying emptiness is saved
a terrifying funeral deep down
that feels like death inside
Adults can move and act
doings' magic in a way
unfortunately in such driven action
judgment does not rule the day
judgment goes with pleasure
which needs to be intense
It has a massive hole to fill
in all that emptines