A WAITING GAME

A WAITING GAME

 

 

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 IT’S 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

 

 

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