The Waiting.
By Randall Stephen Hall. ©
Audio Link below.
https://soundcloud.com/hugh-midden-speaks/the-waiting-6-5-12
This version varies slightly from the original audio version.
You rarely see a cow
Opening a gate on it’s own.
They generally stand and wait
Expectantly.
You rarely see patients
Operating on themselves.
No.
They wait too.
We wait in queues.
We choose, we are conditioned
To wait.
For buses, taxis, planes and meals on wheels.
For babies, birthdays
Christmas holidays.
For friends to arrive.
We wait to live.
We wait to breath.
We learn to wait
With our parents.
They hold our hands
And show us how.
We grow to wait.
Watching the great and the good,
We, the un-washed
Tumble, tongue and chew our cud.
Standing by, in our rude fields.
Gawping, we cogitate.
We wait and wait.
Cow like, we lick, flick
Then shake the flies off our backs.
We yield at ever junction.
It is our function
To never question
Or mention.
As our words wait.
Backed up.
Queuing in sentences.
While the movers and the shakers
Make the earth rattle like a piggy bank.
Go about their business like a tank.
All barrel and tracks, they attack.
But, can there only be so many
To move and to shake?
While the cows, the sheep
And the odd docile goat
Choke the plains of the earth
With their red remotes?
We stand like a field of flowers.
Daisy chained, grounded with one breath.
Waiting for the storm
To trample our roots.
One more step in the procession
To be processed.
To quiver at the slaughter.
To finally move and to shake.
There was a time when
I didn’t think about waiting.
But recently, in a dull hospital room.
All televisioned into submission.
Doped up with the others from my herd.
Waiting suddenly seemed like a chore.
I don’t want to wait anymore.
Comments are closed.