Today is surgery day. I am still in the surgery waiting room and she’s been in there for four hours already. To distract myself from the bile creeping up into my throat, I wrote.

It’s what writers do.

It’s what poets do.

It’s certainly what I do.

I will keep you all posted as soon as I know something.

Trust The Wait

There’s a breathless expectancy
in the hospital waiting room.
I feel it in the man in blue 
speaking nervously on his phone;

I feel it in the woman dressed 
in coral slacks and matching bag
as she rushes past with purpose—
a faint hint of lillies wafting.

Trust the wait; live in the question—
beauty is becoming in us.

Doctors and nurses bustle by 
eyes cast downward even as I 
earnestly hope one brings me news.
The darkness of waiting covers

me like a cocoon; I hate this.
I hate the persistent nagging
of worry, the lingering doubt—
the waiting and the not knowing.

Trust the wait; live in the question—
beauty is becoming in us.

I am longing for this darkness
to burst into glorious light;
I am waiting for certainty
in the middle of misgivings.

So I will close my eyes and long
for days when sunshine kissed the waves,
and I will set foreboding fears
aside to dream of unknown shores.

Trust the wait; live in the question—
beauty is becoming in us.

Denial? Perhaps there is some; 
I prefer resigning to rest.
Not dispassionate, but rather
prepossessed to my pact with peace.

Trust the wait; live in the question—
beauty is becoming in us.

—a draft by Carla Jeanne Picklo Jordan