Second-Hand Gloves

(Anonymous Photo)

WAIT
—Galway Kinnell, 1927-2014 

Wait, for now.


Distrust everything if you have to.


But trust the hours. Haven’t they


carried you everywhere, up to now?


Personal events will become interesting again.


Hair will become interesting.


Pain will become interesting.


Buds that open out of season will become interesting.


Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;


their memories are what give them


the need for other hands. The desolation


of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness


carved out of such tiny beings as we are


asks to be filled; the need


for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

Wait.


Don’t go too early.


You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.


But no one is tired enough.


Only wait a little and listen:


music of hair,


music of pain,


music of looms weaving our loves again.


Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,


most of all to hear your whole existence,


rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion.

_______________________

—Medusa, reminding you that California's Poet Laureate Dana Gioia and Poetry Out Loud winner Chigozie Maduchukwu will be reading at Crocker Art Museum tonight from 6-8pm as part of its Remarkable Artists series. Info and reg.: events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ecooi99a2b037bdc&llr=5nnautdab