Waiting moves through time like a room
You can’t remember entering or leaving.
In hospitals we meet our human family
But don’t recognize each other on the street.
Waiting is an evenly dispersed weight
Across furniture that never asked for pain.
Car trips were like waiting in motion
Between dreams of being somewhere else,
Waiting for parents to visit, for rain to end,
For school bells to sound, for church to be over.
The shadows of birds, like fish shadows,
Move smoothly on the surface of waiting
While undertows compensate for presence
Drawing time further out into timelessness.