The Impatience of the Lonely Heart
The Impatience of the Lonely Heart
I hear the wind and mistake it for
your car.
So, my heart hears.
There’s a child lives within it
who waits for you to come
always,
to pick her up,
to take her home.
All life long has been
her after school.
You’re very late.
She confuses others
with her impatience.
They don’t understand what it is
to wait a lifetime.
Beside me now is a pond
where Spring springs.
Frogs cluck like submerged ducks
intent on you know what.
The water speculates in blue diamonds
like the Hope.
The sun works hard to warm away
the brown.
All, on this bright day,
take the dare
of rebirth.
But the heart is not like earth
that can be turned
for renewal;
and when the wind blows
from the South,
the child who inhabits
that strongest of muscles
twists to look for
your car,
even though she surely knows
that vehicle and all its parts
were long ago consigned
to scrap.
******************************
A sad draftish poem for the 13th day of April, National Poetry Month, written for Grace’s prompt on With Real Toads to write in an unusual way about routine. I’m not sure this fits, but I don’t think I will manage another poem today! (Ha.)
Process notes–the Hope Diamond is, I believe, the largest blue diamond known in the world.
Finally, this picture doesn’t really fit the piece, but I took the pic today! And kind of like it.
Explore posts in the same categories: poetryTags: April poem a day, how hard it is to grow up poem, manicddaily, not a very nice routine, Spring pnd frogs ducking, waiting heart child poem
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ManicDDaily 
April 13, 2014 at 2:52 pm
Your photos definitely aren’t routine. I’ve been noticing what a good eye you have. This one has such great contrasts: lights and darks, flatness and depth, straight lines and arcs.
April 13, 2014 at 3:04 pm
I love the unexpected turn in the end ~ If only the heart can be like the seasons and earth, that turns for renewal and dares for rebirth ~ The imagery of the child tells me its a long time in coming ~
Thanks for writing for Real Toads Sunday Challenge K ~ I commend you for your writing this month ~ Cheers ~
April 13, 2014 at 3:31 pm
What is that tree, anyway? Looks like a horseapple–osage orange.
April 13, 2014 at 10:10 pm
This fits the challenge well…sad the inner child keep watching for a parent that never returns….
April 13, 2014 at 10:18 pm
This tugs at one’s heart…well done.
April 13, 2014 at 10:46 pm
I LOVE the photo! AND the poignant poem. I KNOW that inner child for whom it is always after school, waiting for someone to come. She has lived within me for sixty-odd (VERY odd!) years. Sigh. You nailed it, kiddo.
April 13, 2014 at 11:03 pm
poignant, K ~
April 14, 2014 at 12:14 am
amidst the scenes of renewal as is the routine the friutless long wait too is included within its folds…poignant lines…
April 14, 2014 at 9:55 am
But the heart is not like earth
that can be turned…
So beautiful, like so many of the phrases here, k. I feel the ache of waiting, of looking for what is so wanted (and needed) but never comes, permeating this like a sad sort of background music through every image. We can spend a lifetime coming to terms with the finality of absence, yet somehow, the longing never entirely goes away. Really, really well done.
April 14, 2014 at 2:28 pm
This is so wonderful, and sad… And the descriptive language… Wow!
April 14, 2014 at 4:08 pm
This embodies time-intensified traveling between then and now. The child girl, with her loneliness and her strongest of muscles, comes across as stalwart in her waiting, though the wait is not fulfilled up until the time of this poem, your stanza about spring, the frogs, diamonds, and hardworking sun, leaves one to believe that the emergence of the one who will come, whether it is father, mother, lover, guide, god or goddess, leaves hope outstanding. Indeed, she is still waiting. This is lovely Karin, for its honesty and its tight bond with the passing of one season to the next.