Wishing Well
First published in Ballard Street Poetry Journal in March 2012.
Wishing Well
Every morning, we all go to the office.
We pull up our roll-y chairs and wait.
We’re working, of course, but we’re waiting
More.
The e-news reports increased hunger in the Horn.
Also, they’ve shot another probe deep into space.
Deep. Do we really need to know just how small
We are?
We can feel it, here in our creaky chairs. At least
I can. It’s with me like a toothache. My smallness.
My weakness. That I have to practice how to feel loved.
Wait.
The last time I spent so much time waiting was for something
I’d whispered while flicking pennies I’d found on the sidewalk
Into a fountain at a park in the downtown of my childhood.
Hope
Was in the perfect ping of penny from the tip of my thumb.
In the arch of otherwise worthless copper toward a tiled
Floor. In the glint of many pennies who’d gone before.
Deep
To the bottom. Tiny round relics of wishers past – but they
Are only so small as their wish. I heard one girl at that fountain
Wish for world peace. Another for food for her family.
But me?
I wished to be at the bottom, with other things my size.
Maybe I could learn how to make a wish come true. Maybe
Just how to lie still. Or maybe, with enough waiting, how to
Shine.