Waiting, watching

Welcome!

Native hibiscus (alyogyne)

It’s a wonderful thing that the spring-flowering plants don’t change their minds like the weather. Can you imagine if all the flowers of camellia, wisteria, flowering fruits, and Australian native plants like the pictured alyogyne, westringia, prostanthera, etcetera opened on the sunny days and hid on the cloudy ones? Those would be particularly dismal days. But the flowers, having made their choice to bloom, go boldly onward.

These changeable days are for living as much as any other day, but they also seem to say, ‘Wait and watch! Summer is coming.’ The ‘stream of consciousness’ poem below is not about spring but it plays with the same idea, as the name suggests.

Waiting, watching

           

Sun bright

on my paper, pen shadowed

in sharp relief.

            DON'T WALK

Man with sunglasses waiting

at traffic lights, craning

to see the sign,

waiting

jiggling.

Gleaming silver cars stop.

            WALK

towards stunted plants in terracotta

brown-tipped leaves sparse

trapped, collecting fumes

memorial to a million passing cars.

Nature inserted at strategic points.

            DON'T WALK

I chose this place

sitting in the sun, watching.

Eating quiche and salad with a view

justifies spying,

plate glass window my screen

between the world walking by

and my curiosity

            WALK

Old man totters

jaywalking up the road,

just a few steps closer to the post office,

while drivers wait,

tapping.

            DON'T WALK

Sun intensifies through glass,

melts the chocolate waiting for me

on the saucer of vienna coffee.

I eat sporadically,

write quickly to capture

images, and snatches of thought they inspire.

Lettuce and balsamic vinegar ─

      whatever happened to iceberg and vinaigrette?

Wilted image, names without lyric ─

now we have rocket

                                    oakleaf           

                                                   mignonette ─ but no crunch.

            WALK

A shopper strides past my window, staring in,

the watcher watched

           
But I was eating, not writing,

wrestling to fork leaves with no crunch.

            DON'T WALK

My mouth waters, waiting as

food falls from my fork, splattering into balsamic puddle,

soggy, tangy carrot

browned off with vinegar.

And the quiche, enticing,

tasteless.

            WALK

Young legs in black stockings,

two girls saunter in unison,

tartan skirts short-changed

like their hours of schooling

this winter's day.

            DON'T WALK

I watch from the corner of my eye;

'uniforms' but

not the same shape

not unformed

not anonymous

my daughters' peers.

            WALK           

Ah, there's the bank's security man

on his lunch break,

sees me ─

knows me?

Does familiarity compromise integrity?

            DON'T WALK

I remember.

I remember this place

this piece of ground

used to be Penno's Hardware,

boots and wheelbarrows,

meet your neighbours on Saturday morning.

Now a coffee shop changing

ownership as regularly

as the traffic lights its windows frame.

            DON'T WALK

Time

to drink that waiting coffee.

Sure enough, the chocolate

has melted onto the sun-warmed spoon,

wasted on the paper doily.

I lick the spoon,

lick the inside rim of the latte glass,

wasting nothing;

wasting no memories,

holding them in the sun,

tasting them again ─

more satisfying than coffee and chocolate.

Coffee gone.

Chocolate eaten.

Fingers licked.

Warm in the sun

Lights change, cars stop, people cross.

I watch

            DON'T WALK

I wait to capture time.

Until next week…

Claire Belberg