isn’t a room. It’s the whole house.
Waiting is the message in the bottle in the tidal cove,
floating at high tide, marooned in mud at low.
The music that waits for something to happen or end.
Waiting is silence before snow, emptiness before
the call from the one who could become a boyfriend.
Take my hand, the day self says to the night self.
We’ll sit together and watch the moon rise.
Ellen Goldsmith’s books include Where to Look, Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, winner of the Slapering Hol 1997 chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals. She is professor emeritus of The City University of New York and lives in Cushing, Maine.