Waiting

Is part of something: a blue door opens,
Portuguese fishermen walk from a coffee shop

In Providence, Rhode Island—or Lisbon—
And head for the pier with buckets.

Part of something, they ride the sea:
The Atlantic, part of something.

Mornings on the coast, houses
In fog on the hills, the paint

Like carnival pastels . . . People believe
The whole world is part of something.

The phone rings . . . they give it away.
I spoke last night with a friend . . . He might

One day become your friend, or sometime,
Far off, a friend to your children—

Part of something. I told him
About the English poet

Who, deserting God, still loved
With clean irony the churches

On country roads . . . He’d lean his bike
And go inside—not certain of motive

But to wait, because others had waited
In just that place, sitting through the sunset

Beneath the slender windows.


by Stephen Kuusisto