WAITING

“Old Time, in whose banks we deposit our notes
Is a miser who always wants guineas for groats;
He keeps all his customers still in arrears
By lending them minutes and charging them years.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Continuing my peregrinations through my old notebooks and journals, finding words written long ago. How we change as we grow older… It seems only yesterday that I was writing these words and yet more than two decades have gone by. Looking at old photographs and seeing another person, full well knowing that stranger is I. The world changes, we change, and it’s only these words scribbled on yellowing paper that remain the same, but not constant. Even the meaning they are meant to capture varies with time and with my perception of the words themselves, are altered by time and experience.

Waiting

Sometimes, I feel you’re so close
When for a split second,
I find you in a stranger’s fleeting glance.
Or when I hear by chance
Words said for someone else’s ear,
And I, I make believe they were for me.
But other times,
You’re far away, light years away,
Just like tonight…

It seems impossible that we two shall meet,
But then, I close my eyes
And feel you next to me,
Even if insubstantial,
Even if only in my dreams.

Sometimes, you seem so close,
But at the same time so distant,
That I lose heart, lose hope,
I think that never shall I find you.
And then sometimes,
I think you’ll knock on my door
And come into my life,
Like you’d enter my room,
Just like tonight…

Jacqui BB hosts Poetry Wednesday!