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What is the nature of true enlightenment?
VETERAN OF THE WAITING ROOM
When one has sat in surgical waiting rooms
As many times as I have,
You become a veteran, an expert,
As hardened as the faux leather chair they furnish.
You learn the art of not thinking
Avoiding unavoidable thoughts.
For the questions that begin with, “What if…”,
Only make the hours turn into eternity.
When one sits in surgical waiting rooms,
You learn to read others’ fears.
They reveal them in their posture,
Or proclaim them in their eyes.
The elder man, for example,
Gazing out the window overlooking the pond.
For sixty-one years he’s loved her.
What he would give for just one more.
The young couple holding each other’s hand,
Feeling utterly helpless,
Feeling utterly lost.
The parenting brochure never mentions this.
Or the group of adult siblings standing there bickering,
The self-appointed savior. The frustrated fixer,
The one completely disengaged,
And what appears to be the only normal one.
There is the stone-hearted husband,
Indifferently reading his newspaper,
Or scrolling on his phone,
Or watching some home remodeling show.
Or the hardened veterans of surgical waiting rooms,
Indifferently reading their newspapers,
Or scrolling on their phone,
Or watching some home remodeling show.
No one attempts to engage you in conversation
Or inquire as to what brought you here.
“I’d love to help you carry your cross,
But mine is all I can bear.”
When you are a veteran of the surgical waiting room,
You learn to read the surgeon’s lips.
If you see their teeth, “Everything went well”.
If you see their tongue, “There was a complication”
Or you can simply watch the shoulders fall.
Now a veteran of the surgical waiting room,
My prayers are very succinct.
I no longer beg for miracles.
I long since bartered away my vice.
Now, my prayer is simply,
“Well…Dear Lord….Here we are again.”
And, in that waiting room filled with so much fear,
I hear the words, “ ….I know….I know”.