The Woman Who Waits

And the men who wait with her.
We look for things that spark
something in us, that shift our focus,
turn our quotidian life on its head,
coaxing us to move away from our dull
repetitive expectations.

If alert almost anything can strike us
as beautiful. The sun gleaming down
on bale of hay making it seem to be
a bundled pile of golden straw;
a lonesome daffodil might draw your
attention as it rises to seek light,
standing tall in the window ledge
of an abandoned building.
Almost anything contains within it
a mystical component; the way a person
walks or the impression left by unrelated
objects cast haphazardly together like dice,
but taking on new meaning.

Today it is she. She’s out there again
as she has been many times before.
It has rained. It is clearing. The sky
throws light in all directions.
She is at the crosswalk, heavily dressed
with coat and head scarf, shopping bag in hand.
She and her shadow, toe to toe, sole to sole.

The Woman Who Waits

She is the picture of patience. She may
have been waiting for moments
or days, weeks, decades.

All of us, in and out of the frame,
simultaneously withhold our breath,
so taken aback by the beauty of life
captured in the thrown reflections,
the counterfeit sky reflected in the puddles,
imitate a grander design. All of life lodged
there between the turquoise above
and below her head and the calculations,
the etched algorithms of the stacked
sidewalks that speak the ancient codes,
that whispers for her to wait a little longer.
She abides, looking out for something
delayed-- transport, perhaps justice,
slowly evolving before her very eyes.