In the Waiting Room

Considering the anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States, I was reminded to return to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “I Am Waiting" which returned me (with help from these young people below) to the hope that inspired this response, this love note to America, for an occasion somewhere between Last Rites and Baptism.

SPARROWS WAITING

We were sorting the Grapes of Wrath, 

waiting for the shift to be done. 

Our unrest was everywhere: 

flags and chanting; paint and the piercing 

of swords into the flesh at the sides of sworn enemies. 

When was our Last Supper, and when would it return?

Wonder, we looked for you everywhere, waiting for our numbers

to be called.

The whales waited elsewhere, 

bleeding oceans back into their ears;

do they hear each other through the current of it? 

We wanted to know 

what they'd been saying all along 

after hellos     and we wanted     to lie down again 

––the lovers, the weepers, the dreamers, 

across the Great Divide, our bodies bridges 

for the feet that could     not believe 

unless they stepped     across us, 

unless they put their hands     in the wounds 

of their feet     in our backs, back to the Lost Continent 

they'd been trained to disbelieve America, 

we were waiting for your music for so long 

that when you hobbled back to the Dark Tower

your intimations of immortality bleeding out 

from stray bullet wounds, your torch arm falling 

slack, we couldn't help ourselves America, 

we circled you, we circled ourselves no one 

was looking, but we were there; we stood up, 

our single bodies no longer the bridge 

it was our hands Now we held 

them the shape of us unfastened 

from the overpass ––still, we held, some 

of us even though the gaps 

of our form were widening

our collective path an open mouth. 

Eye, be on your sparrow, now. Watch us 

as we stand before ourselves

waiting

here.

"Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Young People's Chorus of New York City