in line for the show
we watch real life for an hour—
wow, what a cast!
Posts Tagged ‘waiting’
One at the Festival
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged film, people, waiting on September 2, 2024| 5 Comments »
Poem Not Really About Spinach
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cooking, garden, second chance, spinach, summer, time, too late, waiting on August 1, 2024| 2 Comments »
Already bolted and wilting
in the heat, the spinach
is past prime and yet
on this first day of August
I’m able to pull two pounds
of triangular leaves
into my bowl, enough
for a generous pan
of creamy saag paneer.
Sometimes it’s not
too late. Sometimes
the world waits for us.
Sure, the stakes are low tonight,
but sometimes we get a glimpse
that things we thought
were lost are not lost
at all, not yet—just taste
that bright and earthy
green, so full of comfort,
so humble, so good.
Waiting for the Planes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged airplane, boredom, travel, waiting on November 26, 2023| 13 Comments »
Hello urge to be productive.
Aren’t you so sincere?
I see how you think
because there is nothing to do
but wait for the next two hours,
wait for the next five hours,
wait for the next seven hours,
you think I should do something
useful and industrious,
something practical and time efficient.
Something generative.
As if to sit and do nothing
is not a gift.
As if waiting is nothing
but an invitation to work.
As if the goal in life is to
check things off an eternal list.
The longer I sit,
the harder it is to hear you,
well-intentioned as you are.
See how I sprawl on the floor now?
And now, how I rock on my heels
and hum and swing my hips?
How I close my eyes
knowing I won’t fall asleep.
Oh the kingdom of boredom.
How it takes everything I have
to meet it and let it rule me,
to treat it like the treasure it is—
the chance to not be clever,
to not shine, to wander between ambition
and disappointment, between mettle
and quietude, to find a chair
I might sit in for a while
and meet the urge to be productive.
And not open my book.
Not pick up my knitting.
Not study French.
Not converse with a stranger. Not make the call.
Not even smile as I type not a word.
Waiting for the Trill
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged be here now, birds, red wing blackbird, silence, waiting on May 1, 2020| 3 Comments »
Just a few steps from the house
I find a place to sit on a rock
and wait for the trill of the red wing blackbird.
I have waited twenty years to hear it here
in my back yard full of water and willows
and quiet. All day, though intermittent, I’ve heard it.
Funny how much I enjoy the waiting tonight—
perhaps because I know that eventually
the bright call will come. It is, perhaps, like a girl,
waiting through her first date for her first kiss—
she’s pretty sure it will happen, and now, after
years of waiting, she suddenly has
all the time in the world. In fact, the waiting
is delicious—like champagne, dry, with tiny bubbles.
Like summer’s first raspberries—a little too tart,
and yet sweet enough to eat another and another.
I sit in the goldening world and wait and wait.
I listen to the jays as they squawk and the warbler’s
sharp chirp. The wind teases my hair and I wait
until I forget I am waiting, simply noticing the world.
By the time I hear the familiar trill, it greets me
like the old friend it is, then it’s silent again.
The way the sun seems most lovely just before it’s gone,
that’s how the silence holds me.
Extrapolation
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hummingbird, patience, waiting on April 24, 2020| 2 Comments »
Today it’s the hummingbirds that save me.
Not because I see one. Because I don’t.
Every year, the broad-tailed hummingbirds
arrive at our feeders the third week of April.
This year, they’ve yet to arrive.
How many other joys have I been awaiting
that are yet to materialize?
It is hard to spend a life waiting, and yet
this one impatience I meet with trust.
Every year, there are hummingbirds.
They return. And when they come,
we’ll feed them. We’ll admire their furious
wings. We’ll forget they were late.
We’ll delight in their curious hum.
Not Really About Harvesting Radishes
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, poem, poetry, radish, time, waiting on July 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
Pulling the long red radish bulbs
from the garden, I marvel
at their pinkness, rub off the dirt,
bite into the crisp white flesh.
There are few tastes that bite
just right this way—make the mouth
happy to be a mouth and it teaches me,
without trying, that sometimes
when we wait too long,
a thing turns bitter. But oh, get
the timing right, my god, it’s sweet.
One on the Counter
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged paperwhites, poem, poetry, waiting on December 19, 2018| Leave a Comment »
beneath the soil,
the paperwhites prepare
for tall and musky ecstasy—
the waiting, also an invitation
to admire, to say thank you
See How Perfectly It Can Be Done
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, patience, poem, poetry, waiting on May 23, 2018| 3 Comments »
I know that things just don’t grow if you don’t bless them with your patience.
—First Aid Kit, Emmylou
There are gardens in me
where I have tried
to make things bloom
out of season—
how difficult it can be
to let a seed do
what a seed does
all on its own,
especially in a time
of drought when I fear
the seed may not grow at all
if I don’t help it
grow more quickly.
And so I let soil
be my teacher.
How perfectly
it waits, letting
the world feed it.
How easily it
partners with rain,
with sun, with time.
One Game
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged frisbee, poem, poetry, waiting on November 16, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Dear Ralph,
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged patience, poem, poetry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, ripening, waiting on September 19, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Wait until the necessary and everlasting overpowers you, until day and night avail themselves of your lips.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Essays and Lectures”
I believe in ripeness, the wisdom
of waiting. Here on my counter,
the melon sweetens and softens.
The peppers slowly turn from green
to red. The tomatoes become less
like stones and more like kisses.
Terrible to taste an early grape,
the way its sharp juice rucks
the soft lips. Terrible to eat
the berry before it’s earned
its blush. And still, the misery
of waiting—how eagerness
rises up in us, a surge of please,
a tide of want, a rush of now.
Yes, to the wait, the awful wait,
how this trial of patience
brings us closer to ourselves,
how it makes the future inevitable
ever that much sweeter.
Late Greening
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, self actualization, spring, waiting on May 2, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Last year’s wild roses
have not yet discovered
it’s spring—the brambles
are barren and barbed.
What else is there but
to trust that the green leaves
and petals will come? What
else but to stand in our
own barrenness and believe?
6:15 a.m.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bells, poem, poetry, self delusion, waiting on October 3, 2016| 2 Comments »
All night I waited for the sound of bells to wake me.
I waited so long I wondered if they had been rung
but I had not heard. I wondered if I had forgotten
what bells sounded like. I wondered if the ringer of bells
had overslept and I should go wake her or rise
and ring the bells myself. And when at last the bells
were swung and charged the air of the halls
with their bright brass song, I laughed out loud in the dark,
amazed I could believe I’d forgotten the sound of bells.
What else do I think I’ve forgotten that is so wholly present here?
Some sense of purpose? Some sense of communion?
Some understanding of what it means to love?
What if these things are clear, clear as the sound
of bells? Oh fool who waits and waits for something
to appear. Is it possible whatever your waiting for is here?
But I Can Taste It
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged poem, poetry, possibility, rain, tenderness, waiting on March 13, 2015| 1 Comment »
in the night air
scent of rain
that does not fall—
sometimes in the kitchen
scent of tenderness
Can You Hear Them?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, anticipation, being present, poem, poetry, waiting on January 9, 2014| 1 Comment »
The snow begins
then stops to fall.
In the alley, brown
tracks run against the white.
The gray folds through the air
and unfolds. Nothing
about this day seems
capable of settling in.
It is a like a woman
thinking about what
she wants. The blossoms
of her thoughts open
like roses in fast forward.
They wilt and dry in similar
fashion. They are out of season.
This does not stop them.
Sometimes we like to think
we are waiting. Waiting
for something marvelous to happen,
or waiting for an ache to disappear,
or waiting for gray to be
something other than gray.
And sometimes we see what
a gift it is, this indecisive day,
this watching imaginary blooms
that seem so real you can almost
smell the red perfume, almost.
Outside the window,
it is snowing again. No,
not snowing. But the gray
it has settled in and now
the dirty tracks look
like empty staves and anyone
listening might hear through the glass
how the birds don’t wait
to fill in the space with song.
Give it a Minute
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged minute form, personalizing, poem, poetry, silence, waiting on January 26, 2013| 5 Comments »
Did he just say what I just heard?
Those unkind words—
malicious pokes
disguised as jokes.
Should I carp back? Or balk? Or scoff?
Just laugh it off?
Stare blank as sky?
Collapse and cry?
Or keep on making oolong tea,
for him, for me.
A silent room.
The dark leaves bloom.
What We Call Waiting
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged allowing, election, peace, poem, poetry, uncertainty, unknowing, waiting on November 6, 2012| 2 Comments »
And then there is
that moment after
the thrust and jostle
and sprint, after the longing
and righteousness, after the fever,
the furor, the fire, the conviction, when,
burnt out by our own
red ferocity, we see
there is nothing, nothing
to be done. There is
no defeat in this,
only release,
Then only
uncertainty is sound
enough to hold us up.
Then unknowingness is the only
place we can truly rest.