Karen Enns: A Poem

Image by Girts Gailans, courtesy Red Edge Images

AT FIRST
Karen Enns


At first I wanted anonymity,
to be lost in concrete halls and elevators,
markets and cathedrals, city squares.
I wanted music on buses and trains to change me
and tell no one. I wanted to be poor.
But shadows fell and lifted,
a few good measures bloomed.
The stone-white tone that held its pitch
beyond the traffic noise and barking dogs,
the keys rattling in the locks,
began to fade.
Skaters circled the bandshell in the park
early in the afternoons.
There were choirs sometimes,
sometimes a thin resonance.
Gorgeous broken lines of light
slashed the outskirts of the city.


from Ordinary Hours, Brick 2014. Used with permission.

Karen Enns has published two books of poetry with Brick Books, That Other Beauty (2010),  nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award, and Ordinary Hours, released in the spring of 2014. She lives in Victoria. Read our recent conversation here.