March 2016
My husband and I live by the beach where I go to avoid housework and hunt for seashells (when I’m not chipping away at the computer). I also work as a story performer. My poems are just starting to find places in journals. Although this is the first time my work has been published in Verse-Virtual, I have enjoyed commenting on the wonderful poems here and being part of the community as a reader.
On the platform,
pacing up and down,
then sitting in the designated zone
I await your arrival.
A train arrives.
Coats, arms, legs, and umbrellas
tumble from each car.
When they separate a bit
I scan all the many colored
petal faces.
Your face
is never one of the petals
that blows toward the log,
the bench where I wait.
I try to read a newspaper
but my eyes stray
too often to the tracks.
Another train screeches in.
I stand. Are you
on this train?
The arrivals swarm
around me.
As their numbers diminish,
I realize that once more, you
have not come in.
I consider sitting down
to wait still longer.
The train huffs and puffs,
its engines readying to move along.
I salute that wisdom,
gather my thoughts,
and join those
leaving the station.
In my own departing,
I realize, at last,
I have arrived.
No need to wait for you.
©2016 Joan Leotta