Waiting Room

Waiting room: warm as sleep,
Seats lined along the walls,
In a periphery of patience;
Magazine pages rustle
In casually shaking hands;
Advertising on a screen
Mimics normality and the sea
Rushes to shore, tide rising;
Elsewhere a chamber of politicians
Drags out decision or indecision,
Drones on.

Waiting room: elusive sleep
Kept at bay by half silence
And the drawn-out waiting;
The ceaseless tick of passing heels
Marches its beat, beats an unseen path
Down corridors to rooms, to cubicles,
To sanitised couches, and curtained beds.

Waiting room: time seems to stop
Or run idly with a febrile pulse;
Digital clocks, devices, wristwatches,
Judder second hands or digits
Interminably round the sluggish minutes;
In this place all futures are on hold;
Tomorrow is waiting
Just outside the door.

© BH, 2016

---

Couldn’t let National Poetry Day go by. But it takes all day to live a little, think a little then write a poem. Made it. Phew!