A Poem Kept Waiting

I wrote this poem twelve years ago.  It was a formula poem where I had to follow a pattern. It was an assignment for a teacher training.   I cannot remember what the pattern was, but I followed it precisely and this is what I made.  I would not have admitted to you, or even to myself at the time, that I was the girl in the poem.  But it is undeniably right there for anyone to see.  Who knew there was a little ole me in there?  “Wow,” is all I can say, when I read this now.  Because it is so True and so Me and so “Ten-Years-From- Now”.  And at the time I didn’t even know it…

                         Waiting

She sits in the silence of her own heart beating

In the shadow of herself cast by a solitary bulb

Silence lulled by the surety of the steady drip

of a faucet, reminder of a broken promise

never kept.  Still it leaks and resonates in time

With her heart and she remains waiting.

Counting on her fingers, time spent waiting

She taps out the rhythm, beating

minutes absentmindedly; a mourning song for time

When love warmed her more than the bulb

Overhead.  What is that again, a promise?

She is brought back to now by the drip drip

drip.  Fingers drum the table to the drip

drip, drip, her eyes intent on waiting,

glazed over by the cloud of promise

forgotten.  A still heart beating

in tempo: drip, tap, beat and a faintly swaying bulb.

She never meant to be captured by time

Blaming herself this time

She turns from the table, her pain, the drip

To see in the light of the naked bulb

The door knob, unturning, it seems to know she’s waiting

And teases her in the glare of stillness beating.

I will not turn again; to herself this promise

And she rises to a promise

of her own:  forgotten for the last time

aware of her own heart beating,

Racing, she walks toward the drip

and turns the faucet-in-waiting

to a steady flow of resilience dancing under a bulb.

Cool water splashes, hands wet by water, tears.  The bulb

overhead illuminates her face; a new promise.

Fresh hands dried on a towel kept waiting,

hers is the hand turning the knob this time,

door left open behind her and the sound of a drip

growing fainter, her feet carried by her new heart beating

She wonders when time took charge of their promise.

Chasing and beating her shadow lengthened by the bulb

on the street.  no more drip, no more waiting.