The waiting room

Christian Century, April 5, 2000 by Marjorie Maddox

   does not wait patiently
   for us, its stucco walls vacant
   of the pain we hang upon the gray
   and graying we soon become. Between,
   we pretend to plan a son's
   baptism, book revisions, a summer life that lives after
   this. Your husband wants a liver;
   I want a heart that breathes an average rhythm
   within my father's ribs. The others here
   won't fit into our tight, cramped list
   of miracles and what we need
   to get there. Behind our prayers
   the backdrop of another family winning
   what they've lost; their stuttered cares:
   infection and rejection on our cross.