What is this twilight,
this world of shadow?
Neither day nor night,
we name it limbo,
the crumbling ledge
on the fiery edge
of hell. We think we know
it well, and yet the glow
of hellfire is tempting
compared with the empty
darkness of uncertainty.
Anything to stave
a spiritual void beyond the grave.
Kim M. Russell, 30th April 2019
My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Limbo
This Tuesday, for the last day of NaPoWriMo, our guest host is M (grapeling) and the prompt is Limbo. We have examples of poems and a song about limbo, and even a video clip. Are we in limbo, waiting, in some aspect of our lives or do we contort ourselves to meet this or that requirement? We don’t have to incorporate both meanings, or even use the word itself – we can use a synonym. But we should try to keep it under 100 words or even try a ‘55’.
writing in north norfolk 
Nothing is ever straightforward in Catholic dogma, is it?
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Thank goodness I’m an atheist!
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I can’t understand how anyone who was brought up a Catholic isn’t an atheist!
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I have to say that the concept of Limbo is an invention that is hellish in the worst of ways. There is something so cruel about the numbness of being left like that.
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I agree.
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You pose a brave question in your poem, Kim. It gives me chills to think of it.
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Thank you, Jade, chills were what I was aiming for!
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🙂
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Pray for the unbaptized and excommunicated; this is the kind of thing that turned me off from most organized religions. Now I feel comfortable midway between Zen and New Age.
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Me too!
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Nice description of limbo: “the crumbling ledge
on the fiery edge
of hell. “
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Thank you, Frank.
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Wow. Powerful. Been thinking about Dante quite a bit recently!
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Thanks Nathan!
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I like this – ghost of a chance and world of shadow. But your last 2 lines are my favorite, so powerful!
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Thank you, Crystal!
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I like this Kim. “The crumbling ledge on the fiery edge of hell”. Powerful vision, as is the Bosch image. Interesting that you see it as a gateway to hell. I always saw it as the waiting room for heaven, for folks with just a thing or two to work out before they embark for paradise. I liked your piece here…!
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Personally, I don’t think of limbo as anything
other than a primitive way of making sense of death. It’s the hell (and limbo) on earth that concerns me most, Rob.
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“The fiery edge of hell” … a defining of limbo that strikes terror!
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🙂
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Yes, anything to help us know what we will not know until it comes! Great poem Kim.
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Thanks Dwight.I don’t think about it and live day by day. That way I avoid unnecessary anxiety.
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Who knows really until we get there. I specially like this part Kim:
compared with the empty
darkness of uncertainty.
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I think that is what most people feel, uncertainty about what happens when we die, which is why humans cling to anything they are offered. I wonder if animals wonder about heaven, hell and the afterlife.
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Compelling words to inspire much thought.
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Thank you, Astrid.
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Like all the best poems, there’s more than one level. All those poor babies – left nowhere- how cruel – but under it there’s that push and pull, the wish for certainty, even if it’s terrible. It’s one of your best, I think.
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Thank you, Sarah.
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Hi Kim. I appreciate how elegantly you’ve outlined the edges of Hell, here. Limbo – sort of Hell-light, I suppose, and like you, I marvel at our bipedal species immense capacity for aiming to remain blind. ~
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😊
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” We think we know
it well, ” – but we humans create what we do not know and make-up what we do not understand – I liked the way you rhymed the poem Kim
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Thank you, Laura.
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I’ve never been one for organized religion yet I do believe in a magnificent presence. I can’t look at the intricacies within nature and believe it’s all a result of science. Well done Kim!
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🙂
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oh, yes! The crumbling ledge on the edge – leaves me trembling
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That’s how I think of dementia, as a kind of limbo. I don’t want to go anywhere near that ledge.
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