Before Another Year Changes
Philosophy and the Dog
Waiting
I’m in God’s waiting room, my father says, equating age with the anterooms
of doctors and dentists—old magazine pages curled with oil from fingertips, stained carpets,
uncomfortable chairs—where heads bow over the breviary of phones. But we’re all in God’s
waiting room. The womb, warm and watery, is only the first. In school, our eyes press clock
hands forward. At theaters, we wait for movies to help forget an ache we don’t understand.
We wait for answers at 16, 18, 21 to come from driving, voting, vodka. We wait for the buzz
to come, the hangover to leave. For sleep, for morning, for hunger to find its toast and eggs.
For Friday’s waiter to bring cups of clam chowder, Saturday’s trailer to give way to feature
presentation, Monday’s DMV clerk to call our number. We wait for the sound of tires at bus
stops; shift our weight on the platforms of train and subway stations; swing our luggage
between stanchions at airports. The air I breathe without thinking is my lungs’ waiting room.
The May garden I plant in chill earth is August’s waiting room. A nurse appears in blue
scrubs and green running shoes. He startles me, speaking my name. I put the magazine
down, follow him to an examination room, and sit on the crinkly paper of eternity, waiting.
.
Ken Craft teaches at York County Community College in Maine. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor, The Pedestal, Spillway, and Pushcart Prize XLIX: Best of the Small Presses (2025 Edition). He is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Reincarnation & Other Stimulants, andmaintains a blog on reading, writing, and poetry at kencraftauthor.com.
Stone Poetry Quarterly 