‘Watchful Waiting’ in Central Park: A Poem - WhoWhatWhy ‘Watchful Waiting’ in Central Park: A Poem - WhoWhatWhy

Culture

Dominant curve, Wassily Kandinsky, painting, 1936
‘Dominant Curve,’ an oil on canvas by Wassily Kandinsky, 1936. Photo credit: Wassily Kandinsky / WikiArt (PD)

But waiting for what?

                  “Watchful Waiting” in Central Park

­

March first   cloud-scrim sky

         pale moonlike sun   glacial gusts

                        fog-glazed trees shiver

Old man with new cane

         takes a break on a hard bench —

                     stiff-legged mutt stalks past 

When lymphoma came

         to stay   it called in a voice 

                     I heard as my own:

Diagnosis bleeds

        into prognosis… How long

               do you want to live?

Witch-hazel’s sudden

         yellow points the way out of

                         these wintry confines.

                               * Chinese witch-hazel, 

                                Hamamelis mollis

                               aka “winterbloom”


  • Gerald Jonas is a senior editor at WhoWhatWhy and a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times, as well as other journals large and small.

    View all posts