Best Poems Written by Karen Bowen

Effort At Speech Between Two People

Speak to me.  Take my hand.  What are you now?  I will tell you all, I will conceal nothing.  When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit who died in the story, and I crawled under a chair, a pink rabbit:  it was my birthday and a candle burnt a sore spot t my finger and I was told to be happy.

Oh, grow to know me.  I am not happy.  I will be open:  now I am thinking of white sails against the sky like music; like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.  There was the one that I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.

Speak to me.  Take my hand.  What are you now?  When I was nine, I was sentimental, fluid: and my widowed aunt played Chopin, and I bent my head on the painted woodwork and wept.

I want to be close to you.  I would link the minutes of my days close somehow to your days.  

I am not happy.  I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quite poems.  There has been fear in my life.  Sometimes I speculate on what a tragedy his life was, really.  

Take my hand.  Fist my mind in your hand.  What are you now?  When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide, and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, thinking of jumping toward death:  if light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty, if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.  I am unhappy.  I am lonely.  Speak to me.

I will be open.  I think he never loved me:  He loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls.  He said with a gay mouth,: I love you.  Grow to know me.

What are you now?  If we could touch one another, if these our separate entities could come to grips, clenched like a Chinese puzzle...yesterday I stood in a crowded street that was live with people and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.  Everyone silent, moving...Take my hand.  Speak to me...

Copyright © Karen Bowen | Year Posted 2015