A WAITING GAME

Photo by Bobby Wong Jr.

A WAITING  GAME

This is the game/ we keep engaging in, Finding/ a Good Stopping Point by/ Seeing Clues in the Universe./ Tell me when, that’s us,/ grinding, waiting. Say when. ---Hannah Stephenson

Looking for a good time to stop,

is to stop looking like slumping

on a fallen trunk or a trail rock

jagged and jutting out of the bluff. 

Morning walks get longer along

empty spaces before familiar curbs

signal a turn to what we wait for:

the final bend. We are back home. 

“HURRY UP PLEASE ITS TIME.

Now Albert is coming back,

make yourself  a bit smart.”* Eliot,

of course, said it for me earlier. 

How long ago was that, when I

read those Wasteland lines? How

long have I waited to use them?

Is this a good time, yet? I waited. 

Because we have seen the clues,

because we have seen them all

already, I feel it is time to stop

waiting, sum up the bill, and go. 

What was I given to bear the pain

of knowing that I did not know?

Or build a home I could not live in?

What tools must I now return? 

In summing up, I will discount this,

in the game of haggling for a place

back in the Garden. Our stay here

was overpaid. We waited too long 

for that room with a better view,

that terrace with a canopy of roses,

and blue birds trilling on the sill.

O, for a touch of that distant sky! 

Next time around, if there is one,

I will be smart. I will settle only for

a room where I could see the sky

and the sea conspire to eat the sun. 

---Albert B. Casuga

11-27-11

*T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland, II. A Game of Chess, T.S. Eliot, the Complete Poems and Plays 1909-1950