The Waiting Week

I was recently tagged with a lovely meme by the lovely Dave at Pics and Poems. I have never done a meme on this blog before, and as it is of a vaguely personal (I mean as opposed to artistic) nature, I'm not sure I could come up with anything interesting. While I encourage you to go and see what a good job he's made of it, here's some more poetry. 

Unusually for me, this follows a pretty strict metre, which the enjambment kind of wrecks at a lot of points. I'm sure you'll spot them and shake your head in disappointment. Other than that, enjoy.

(And although I am still considering that meme, I may as well mention that the following contains at least seven separate facts about me...)

The Waiting Week

 

The windscreen wipers in my father’s car;

my sister conjugates French verbs in time

with indicator’s rhythm. Foggy stars

of brake lights on the school run: your exams

will start tomorrow and I know you are

staying home to study for them now.

I think of you, asleep, your mouth still slack

unturned by morning’s curtain-light alarm –

outside the winter daylight bleeds grey-black.

 

Biology. We study respiration.

Rain licks the windows and I think about

Sucking your fingertips. Such education.

My best friend laughs and all is damp again

nail-varnished and sweet-smelling like shampoo.

Next we have Maths, and I imagine you’re

examined, asked to name the points and turns

the sultry coefficient correlation.

Outside: the sycamore, the gorse, the ferns.

 

On Thursday morning you are flying out

to Belgium with your Public Speaking team.

I talk to my Careers teacher about

the universities and plans and details.

I sit and watch the paint as it peels off

the outside drainpipe. Nothing inside stirs.

I would rather tell her about you

how you speak such lovely Irish, and about

the words you use, the pretty things you do.

 

In school this week, I’m restless and daydream

about your school tie and your shoulder-blades

and your Toyota Highlander. I mean

I don’t know what to think. I am uncertain:

a floating retina, a dislocation.

But still, I find the happiness in this

potential. This uncertainty of fate.

The question: firm, remaining to be seen

the week: irresolute, not yet too late.

 

Something of this remains when it is done –

and anyway I cynically suspect

it would not be so thrilling, if begun –

this sense of ambiguity and hope

that you might bring me gifts back home from Belgium

and I would call you up on Sunday night.

If I could always have this same ability

to know we are unfixed, unhooked, undestined

surrounded constantly by possibility.