The Waiting Season

The Waiting Season

The waiting season is different in the year after recovery,
it carries the memory and the discovery
of how close the last one came, which sharpens every wait
into a keener thing, which is the recovery’s specific trait.

The waiting season with a full grain store is still a wait,
the waiting season with the memory of the empty plate
is the waiting season with an edge that full doesn’t remove,
which is the after-famine’s permanent groove.

We check the stores twice what we used to, which is the village’s
collective anxiety expressed in the privileges
of the after, which is checking twice a day instead of once,
which is counting what was there the day before for once.

The young people find this excessive and they’re right,
the young people who didn’t live through the previous night
of the crisis find the counting and the checking neurotic,
and from their position in the after it’s quixotic.

We check the stores twice because the last time we were wrong
about the adequacy and the year was too long,
which is the explanation and the justification
and also the wound that time will close with patience.

The waiting season is shorter every year in the after,
not in the calendar but in the rafter
of the specific dread that sits above the waiting,
which is receding as the stores keep demonstrating.