The Waiting

There are things I can do 
and things over which I have
no influence. I can mail care

packages and transfer funds, check 
in even if I don't get a response. 
That winter, a weight arrived 

uninvited and stayed. I know 
I can't erase the accumulation 
of hours the body has 

already lived— a long chain 
of hallways from whose windows 
you glimpsed a train 

whistling through the tracks, 
the frozen landscape. All I want 
for you is a normal life, 

by which I mean mornings that don't 
require courage, afternoons moving
forward without obstruction, 

nights when sleep doesn't need 
to be won by exhaustion. I scour
my world for words to hold

against its unforgivingness,
for words to lift without denying
the fires walked through, the wounds

and barbs. Since prayer is more  
than asking, is waiting, then I wait for 
the tender spots to show themselves 

again, for the drain to clear and water 
give itself so the spirit rinses even
just enough suffering from the day.