A Letter to Myself While (and About) Waiting
Dear Ted,
While you are waiting, remember to look left and look right, to look in and out, and, as ever, up and down. Scan there for beauty and hope, the diligence of what grows, a sign of what will not sit on any graph.
Do you hear your false thoughts? The ones that will, if nothing else, keep that self for which you wait dragging his feet? Dug in against who you wish to be? Can you remind yourself that the audience for those thoughts–friends, lovers, dead parents, shrinks, the world imagined–will never be moved by need or the need to impress? Never won over or even swayed by the camouflage or pretend and pretense? “If I could fool myself in a minute I’d fool you” sings Elvis. Maybe, except when I fool only myself.
Are you afraid? Are you lost? Are you alone?
Yes, and always. No and not at all.
Breathe, of course. Coffee, of course. Walk, of course.
Tomorrow of course. And, Mary Oliver, of course,
Somewhere a thousand swans are flying
through the winter’s worst storm.They are white and shining, their black beaks
open a little, the red tongues flash.Now, and now, and now, and now their heavy wings
rise and fall as they slide across the sky.