waiting

The five-block walk to the subway.
The twelve-week sale of the house.
The hours to surgery.
The years to degrees.
The decades to wisdom.
From outset to threshold
of the threshold,
of the threshold,
counting minutes,
noting stones
mapping turns,
imagining the face on arrival,
the place of landing
in fragments and smudged sketches
as a trailing dream.

A zen master would counsel
to be in each second,
to learn from each minute
to acknowledge each step.
I try, lord knows,
I listen hard.
But with each boot plod
or sole flap
or hoof suck
I hear only halts:
Not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.
Not yet.

history lesson

Cleaning out
is history research,
an archeological dig,
each layer revealing
moments from the past
weeks,
then months,
then years,
—what mattered at the time.

While cleaning out the garage
I found a wad of bread
some creature had stashed
between summer cushions
with dust, leaves, twigs
—an abandoned nest
built upon the boxes
we brought with us
intending to repair
an even more
ancient
past.

 

discombobulated

I woke completely confused, an hour before the alarm this morning. Although I’m already a week into my new job, I startled from my sleep unsure of what day my new employers were expecting me to start working.

This came after two busy days in Rhode Island helping Bob get the house closer to ready for sale, bookended by two three-and-a-half-hour train rides (which explain why we didn’t visit New York as often as we had intended when we moved to Providence), plus the added hour subways between Penn Station and Bed-Sty.

I was discombobulated much of the weekend in Providence. As I was falling asleep on Saturday night, back in my own bed with Bob and our dog Marcello by my side, I had been scrolling through Manhattan apartment listings on my phone. For a few seconds I wondered if I could make an open house or two before I met my train the next day. I had to remind myself that I was in Providence currently, and wouldn’t be back in New York until after my train.

missed connections: losing my iphone as i leave new york

“How is that phone even working?” The fourteen-year-old son of our friend in Paris asked, staring across the bistro table at my iPhone with the kind of casual disdain that French teenagers have perfected.

He was right, of course (as all those French teenagers usually are). My iPhone’s battery had overheated and expanded, pushing up against the screen, which had detached around the edges along the top. It being a work phone, I could have turned it in for a replacement, but knowing I would be leaving the university in six weeks, I didn’t want to go through the hassle, despite risking the loss of all service and connection while on vacation in Europe.