Three Poems

Rapunzel

He comes by every day at five,
Just after work. He gets off of
His horse, and calls up, “Hey,
Rapunzel, are you there?,” as
If I had someplace to go. I put
My head out of the window,
And we talk a little while. I
Don't know why he keeps
Coming. He knows that I'm
Trapped in here. He's said
He has a wife and kids. He
Talks about the guys at work.
In other words, he has a life.
I don't. I only wait for him.
He told me that he dreams
That, one day, we will be
Together. I said we won't,
And I cried, and knew he'd
Never come again, but, still,
He does. He makes me
Happy. He can say the nicest
Things, like, “I love your
Long hair.”


Prisoners

I see that you don't understand.
I don't myself; I merely know that
She, who's here only for minutes,
Is the one I have to love. There
Isn't, can't be, someone else,
And she returns for those few
Minutes to be mine because
She gets something from me
Which she can't get from
Anybody else.

If I found a million dollars
Under cushions of a couch,
The first thought that would
Come to me would be that
We'd been liberated from
Our separate prison cells to
Rush together, not for seconds,
But for the remainders of our
Lives. I'd want to bring
The news to her... Then
I'd begin to change my
Mind. How could I leave
My wife and kids?
They'd never want to
Speak to me, and how
Could she turn from
Her parents, from the
Man she plans to marry?
Suddenly, a million dollars
Will not open prison doors,
And she and I, though
Driven toward each other,
Never will be lovers more
Than a few minutes at a time.

And I suppose that you're
Not sure these meetings, called
By our compulsions, framed
By guilt, amount to love, but
Could they bear another
Name? A type of shared
Insanity? You may be onto
Something there. I wouldn't
Argue. I'm like you. I do
Not understand.


Erika

She was the one I loved before
This one I love; just a woman,
Beautiful, a porcelain doll. I
Saw her first from far away
As she saw me, and both of us,
Our faces showed, had said
At once, “What is this I see?”
She, an actress, poised and
Perfect, seemed to have
Grown used to having people
Fall in love with her, and she
Was gracious, I must say.
We talked about the theater.
She gave me tickets to a play
In which she had a leading
Role, and then she left,
Beneath it all, a girl who
Had grown up on a farm,
And knew what she should
Do. She married her old
High school sweetheart,
Had two kids, and settled
Into Lander, in Wyoming,
And obscurity, and I, still
Near the sinful city, would
Not have remembered her
If she had not returned in
Dreams to hold me, to say,
“It's okay.” A specter now,
With raven hair and skin
So pale as porcelain, she
Flies from her home in the
Mountains to keep looking
After me. She knows (I'm
Not sure how she does) that
I have found another love,
And she is happy with her
Own, yet, still, she visits me.



Poetry by Lawrence Beck The PoetBay support member heart!
Read 76 times
Written on 2015-12-14 at 05:23

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