Journal of Sacred Work

Is there a place for poetry in the world of caregiving? There is no such thing as caregiving without poetry since loving care is always an expression of art.

So much of our lives is spent waiting. For what do we wait, and how?…

Waiting

Yes, I am trying to protect my mood by hiding within my own waiting room from sounds that might deposit me back into the world. 

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I am the sound of someone waiting before rows of present leaves that stare slow as the eyes of an ox that has stopped to look.

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I wait the way doctor’s patients sit, heads tilted into People or Popular Mechanics, or, in my case, Field and Stream, hip-deep, tip of fly-rod whipping, hook of fly lusting for mouth of trout, one ear cocked for the leaden voice that will call me from the High Sierras to prepare my chest for a stethoscope’s icy kiss.

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I wait for silver planes to leave & land; for cherry lights to change to lime; for the start of the Red Sox game & its end; for the first sip of tonight’s pinot noir; the last slice of dill havarti; for Dylan to lean into his harmonica; for the first note to cross Carly’s lips.

& people ask me for my numbers instead of my name.

31^st century archeologists sifting for shapes will study the contours of our waiting, examining 21^st century artifacts to learn for what we might have waited, how our time-killing compared to that of ancient Greeks semi-circled on an Athens evening anticipating the first lines of Euripides’ new play about Medea.

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In the shopping mall, watches watch from a kiosk manned by a bony-wristed man whose face says he’ll be happy when the little hand on his dial aims its fluorescent finger at 5.

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I wait for leaves to fall & grow back, for Tony Perkins to push through the bathroom door & rip the shower curtain, for Rachmaninoff to lay his fingers on the first notes of the second movement of his Third Piano Concerto.

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I wait for someone to save me from my pain.

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Some wait for the end of the world, others for someone to save them from it.

I wait for you to find me near the returning frost, yes.