Waiting
You aren’t waiting for Godot,
maybe you don’t know what it
is. The waiting will end in some moment,
some probably commonplace experience, like
waiting for the mortgage payment to
post, or waiting for the microwave to
beep that the quiche is done.
The life is ordinary, American consumer in
middle age far removed from Isis, Nazi Germany, feasting on
photoshopped images of physical perfection, just
waiting on that middle age spread, retirement,
social security and a 401K.
You have no recollection of the horrors of
Achilles, the terrors of blind Tiresias, the
incestuous madness of Oedipus, for your sense of
history is the latest sports column, who will win
the Super Bowl, World Series, who will go on a
major golf run—will it be Tiger or some new
kid on the block?
Waiting, like the dinosaurs waited for that immense
mountain to come hurtling in and force a cease to
all foraging, or the black death of the calamitous
13th century, all somehow akin to a dentist’s visit,
a blockbuster movie of car chases, big, bad explosions,
a shoot-the-hell-out-of-the-bad-guy finale and “hero”
take the feisty female.
Waiting for the negative news, stock market dip,
the latest CD by the latest, hottest new voice murmuring
nothing. So used to waiting and growing toward nothing
that even the girls in their thin summer dresses deserve
hardly a glance.
Waiting.
Waiting.
You are waiting for you.
poetryrepairs #235 v17.03:032
What Good is Love?
I bet a lot of people have asked themselves
that question: Abelard after they took his
balls, Paris lying mortally wounded, Medea
spurned by Jason—but it’s not just the mythic
amours, or television and movie trysts.
Common guys and gals have wrestled, like
Job’s angel, with this question, all scratching
their heads in hormonal angst.
I mean, what good is it?
In this day and age love is sold as a
commodity, a panacea—strutted down
runways, soaked up at bars.
Portrayed as a magic cure all, the healthy
and the ill, the aged and the young, the
deranged and the semi-sane pursue this
Alice rabbit hoping not to get stuck in
some endless hole.
Really, what can you do with love?
It can’t be measured, quantification is a
mathematician’s nightmare, the banker can’t
deposit it in your account and say this is the
value.
No measurable price like any other relative
thing: diamond, gold watch, a new car or
house. No, because what really blows people’s
minds is the myth, the eternal Jason-quest
after the golden apples—some narrative
mystery that holds the secret to itself,
smiling, the underground hibernating seed—
waiting to hatch.
poetryrepairs #235 v17.03:032
To Listen
Listen, I told her. You are young, without
molding, little more than a new moon.
We sat upon a glacial carved rock, watched
the river’s eyemusic far below the East Rim
run like a chorus from applause.
Someday, in the deep night between
covers, when he whispers of Isolde, pretend not
to hear.
When he tells you of the Lady with a bloody
knife sing to him, “Bringing to mind all the things I did,
So many that I can’t recount them all in this tale: Going
in winter to waulkings and weddings…What remains of
Andrew’s house, now full of nettles, Brings to mind when
I was young.”1
Seduced by cities and media he will not know your
song, but sing anyway, sing till the stars walk the moon’s
ladder down the sky.
We had come to this place of rock and mist, tree
and wild to be within salvation’s myth, to touch the
core of a lightning nourished oak, be not drooped or
feebled.
In those birth covers when he wants to
Eros the tale between your bereaved thighs, laugh of
Troy and Briseis buried in Agamemnon’s armpits—call
yourself Mary the Magdalene who washes the sky with
her hair.
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The Art of Reading
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REPAIR: resort, frequent or habitual going; concourse or confluence of people
at or in a place; making one's way; to go, betake oneself, to arrive; return to a place; to dwell; to recover, heal, or cure; to renew; to fix to original condition. -- Oxford English Dictionary
read more poetry
RALPH MONDAY : 'Bergman's Island' & Other Poems
Waiting
What Good is Love?
To Listen
1 Mary MacPherson. “Longing for Home.” 19th century Scottish ballad
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