The Lady Down the Street

grooveamaticgrooveamatic Posts: 1,374
edited August 2004 in Poetry, Prose, Music & Art
She waits for death and it will not come
(with it's grace and majesty
somehow inevitable)
Each day a wait
Beside her cane
Sometimes wheelchair she waits,
Fleeing through each moment briefly
As though it were a spectacle
Put on specially for her,
Shocked that each yet passes
Rather than magically stand still
For a lark.
And it will not come
As she daily slumps
Bag of bones
In an heirloom couch
Searching the muddy corners
Of each dark room
In her dark house
For promises the years made to her
And then forgot:
Kisses in stairwells
And gilded book-pages
Alive now only
Where one wall
Meets another
In muted history.
And it will not come
On summer noons
Surveying her finite square of tulips and tomatoes,
Working the breathing soil
With bare hands.
Seed in, flower out. Weeding to be done.
As she watches, still things grow,
Are born, die when they are ready.
But not her,
Having been planted in too-fertile ground,
Growing for so long
The sun scorches her hair.
And it will not come for her,
While she pleads ceaselessly
With passive faith,
Active desire.
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Post edited by Unknown User on

Comments

  • :( So sad, groovematic but I think you captured the feeling very well. Damn this getting old business, huh? :)
    Forget your perfect offering, there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. - Leonard Cohen
  • Originally posted by grooveamatic
    She waits for death and it will not come

    This reminds me of Samuel Beckett, this line.
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