For nine years in me it has waited

Meanwhile

BY JACK GILBERT

It waits. While I am walking through the pine trees

along the river, it is waiting. It has waited a long time.

In southern France, in Belgium, and even Alabama.

Now it waits in New England while I say grace over

almost everything: for a possum dead on someone’s lawn,

the sing light on a levee while Northampton sleeps,

and because the lanes between houses in Greek hamlets

are exactly the width of a donkey loaded on each side

with barley. Loneliness is the mother’s milk of America.

The heart is a foreign country whose language none

of us is good at. Winter lingers on in the woods,

but already it looks discarded as the birds return

and sing carelessly; as though there never was the power

or size of December. For nine years in me it has waited.

My life is pleasant, as usual. My body is a blessing

and my spirit clear. But the waiting does not let up.