The Waiting

The Waiting



I waited for you calmly,
with infinite patience.
I waited for you hungrily,
just short of desperate.

When you came I knew that
desperate was unattractive.
I was calm, no one wants
the kind of calm I was.

It tried your patience,
it made you hungry for a man
who was hungry.
I am that man, I said,

but I said it calmly.
My body was an ache, a silence.
It could not affirm how long
it had waited for you.

It could not claw or insist
or extend its hands.
It was just a stupid body,
closed up and voracious.


Stephen Dunn

Posted over on Verse Daily