Express Line
Aug 7 2010


I wait
watching people wait.

I am impatient in line,
wish I’d brought a novel
floss
could knit.
So I do mental arithmetic,
how much of my life I have spent in line
or spent, waiting
for something unexpected,
divine intervention,
the deus ex machina
to descend.

But heaven waits
and hell beckons
and I am suspended
in limbo,
the purgatory
of cashier-in-training,
housewives writing cheques,
arthritic old men
counting out coins.

There are tabloids, to distract us,
celebrities looking average
bad hair, no make-up,
which make us feel better
about ourselves.
But Hollywood gods
do not wait,
they have flunkies and publicists for that.

I, on the other hand,
cool my heels in line
try to be philosophical
people-watch.
Because this moment of being alive
is no worse than the next one,
so just what, and when
am I waiting for?

And for one ecstatic moment
I am Zen,
surrendering agency
indifferent to outcome
my boundaries getting thin.

Until, that is
the mental arithmetic begins —
keeping count
in the “12 items or less” line;
giving her
the evil eye.