I am the one who waits

 For the last few years  I did something here with the O Antiphons.  Not this year.  Time to give them a rest.

Here's another poem I love, by my poet friend Luci Shaw.  Luci will be 95 this year.

DECEMBER

By Luci Shaw

 

Last night I lay awake and practiced

getting old. Not difficult.

I needed to teach myself to love my destination

before I arrive.

As time stretches ahead I feel the earth shift

and my writing hand shakes—its rubbery nudges

stretching, then growing weak, the way a day

will lose its light and give itself to darkness,

that long, questioning pause of inquiry—What next?

And how long before light reopens

her blue eye? I am one who waits, still,

to arrive somewhere, some bright nest

where language breeds, unhindered, where

I can dip into the moving edges of words

and breathe their profound syllables and

can live there a long time, with enjoyment

and never need to come up

to breathe.

This was taken of myself and Luci  at the wonderful Glen West Workshop in Santa Fe in 2012

art by Walter Launt Palmer