Waiting for You

I wrote this poem, Waiting for You, in gratitude. For the beauty of nature that inspires me every day. For the joy of writing. For the remarkable simplicity of loving someone special for a long time. As I wrote in the introduction of my poetry book, Silver Tip, I aspire to choose my words carefully and thoughtfully. Whittle and shape the poem down to its bones. Convey as many meanings as possible, for myself, for you, and at the same time, keep it simple and unpretentious.

Waiting for You is also about how quickly things change. A bud in the spring opens, flowers in the summer, drops its leaves in the fall, goes dormant in winter, and then begins again. Seasons come; seasons go. The average human life is about 4,000 weeks. Some have more. Some have less. Waiting for You is about living as fully as possible in however many weeks I am given and never forgetting to tell those I love how much I truly love them.

Waiting for You

In a moment, it came to me

the robin sings all her mornings

the Sitka spruce holds its roots deep

the river flows to the sea

the wild rose blooms

even if I do not see it

in a twinkling of the eye, I suddenly

see more clearly than I ever have

as the Northern Lights open against

the dark sky, there one moment

gone the next, fleeting,

astonishing wonder

long ago, I remember waiting for you

emptied of light, sprawled

on my face, still as a corpse, smelling

the rich loamy earth

listening to a chickadee chirp

in the branch of a tree, waiting

for the earth to ooze up, bring me home

I was young then, waiting for sunsets

and wafer-thin stones to skip twelve times

across the blue water before sinking

under the surface, waiting for heat-rippled

beaches, a hundred migrating geese

before walking toward a cliff

there below, a black bear

sitting alone, turned slowly,

looked me in the eye

sniffed the breeze

encouraged me to lift my eagle wings

and soar; it was then that I saw

more clearly than I ever had

the robin will sing

the tree will hold

the river will flow

the wild rose will bloom

and in this dying world,

if I go first

I will once again

wait for you

Enjoy the Passage of Time.

Sharon

© 2025. Sharon Kreider. All Rights Reserved.