Waiting for the Next Visitor

I have written all that needs to be said.
Spilled what blood I have to spill.
Simplified what life is left. Created enough.
My poetry is no longer the same journal
of battles and wars won and wars lost,
a catalog of scars.

What do I do with myself
when the demons have left,
or at least gone on a sabbatical;
when they are not there to haunt my mornings,
when they politely come for tea instead of blood?

I am not sure. Am I useful any longer?
Do I have ways to provide home to the warriors
all around me who still fight, day after day?
What do I have to offer them except perhaps
a brief respite, or hope, or an image or two?
I am not sure.

But here I am. Made anew. Yet again.
Gloriously uncertain of anything beyond the moment.

Deep breaths are not an effort any longer.
They are simply how I breathe. It worries me.
Will I be ready for the next attack? For I do not have faith
in the longevity of peace.

There is a strange rain outside my window.
Bright, Sunny. With a downpour and thunder.
But I am inside, having learned the art of windows and doors,
when to come in and when to go out,
and when to sip my tea and wait for the next visitor.
whoever, whatever, he may be.

About this poem

Follows the mood of this morning’s poem. I am eating lunch alone, looking out at the rain. And the sunshine. Both. And the thunder. There is, I suspect, a rainbow somewhere. And lightning. Strange weather in a strange time. A perfect stirring of the creative pot.

The picture was taken in Williamsburg, Virginia.

Tom