Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Others




















Others

How is it that we live
outside of others?

How can we show so much
yet be unknown?

My children do not know
the me they see here,

the one who needs to soothe
herself  with green,

just as I do not recognize my mother, 
who was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen,

swishing her skirts down St. Paul's streets,
licking on a ten-cent cone of cream.

2 comments:

  1. One needs ask in order to know another, the eyes see but they rarely garner the full truth. It is the mouth that gets the understanding that the mouth gives.

    Nice Karen...Invisibility in the material world.

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  2. This is among the most difficult of topics to get both emotionally and objectively right. Every metaphor I know deflects some critical facet and I think your poem is a very good attempt.

    My mother paid a steep price sourced in a small rewrite:

    "My people do not know..."
    with all else staying the same.

    She worked very hard to get it right and the price she paid, those closest in her life thought she was phony because so complexly contrived, while she was actually sincere and even more complexly contrived.

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