From: beh@geech.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Bruce Howells)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: songs for beh
Date: 13 Sep 92 22:48:12 GMT
Article-I.D.: geech.BEH.92Sep13184812
Distribution: rec
Organization: Internet access via the Free Software Foundation


1. 
Into the endless night of nights
you followed me
or I you
it doesn't really matter at this time.
Into the endless night of nights
we both came
searching, seeking, 
needing, wanting
and found.
I am not sure what we found.

Into the endless days on days
I entered, and you followed
or was it you who lead the way?
I cannot say.
Into the endless days on days
we wandered, 
seeking, searching,
wanting, needing
and found.
What have we found?

2.
It was a pink dress
do you remember?
It was a pale pink dress worn in 
the heat of summer in Detroit.
It was a risk taken
and a chance gambled.

Somewhere in the nights
which followed,
when you were there, and
I was elsewhere,
I thought I had grown tired of your
never-ending lies and excuses
but the tall trees mocked me
and the flowers wept their petals
at my shame.
We kissed unashamed in the presence
of the flowers
and they wept, when you had gone.

It was a pink dress
worn in the heat of Detroit
when I shook from head to toe
wearing my brightest smile
of shocked pleasure when you held my hand
and we went to my secret place
out in the open,
and when the public eyes had passed,
you saw what you wanted,
and took it.

I never did learn if I had
loathed you.

3.
Could you tell me a story?
There's so much I need to know.
I need to know your whims, you see,
why you crave the light on black
so late at night,
why your heart is stubborn in its
denials of the truth.  
Please, tell me your stories.

You told me so many things
which I had once believed
and now, I know the truth.
Tell me your story, love,
tell me, please.

It is so hard to read sometimes,
your deep and hidden fears
but love,
I'm here, now...

tell me.

4.
Could it be that somewhere in our futures
there is a child?
We watch the babies anxiously,
clinging to their parents' arms 
and hope it will not happen,
yet.

I don't want a baby.
I do want a baby.
I don't know.

5.
You sometimes talk in your sleep.
It's usually about the problems at work,
which JCL and which language,
and the Mac that died.
You sometimes talk in your sleep.
Once, you told me not to leave you,
never to leave you
and once, you wept.
And once,
in the middle of the night,
when I was in a strange place,
you said someone's name.

It wasn't mine.

6.
Is there any doubt left?
Sometimes, in me, I think there might be
but I think that's the right thing
for me.

Is there any doubt in you?
Sometimes, I think I see it,
hovering over you like the shadow
of a cloud passing by
and I go to the mirror, and search my face
a new wrinkle here, and a new sag there,
and I wonder,
Nancy at 30, what is Nancy at 30?

Some say young, and others say ancient,
and I don't know any more.

You reach for me in the nights,
and in the mornings, hold me closer
than close
and sometimes, when I know you're not looking
I weep
for what might have been.

But, when I know you are not looking,
sometimes, I laugh
for what is.

--Nancy Howells
(beh@gnu.ai.mit.edu with the good graces of my husband)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems