“Thank you for your patience.”

by Emily Strauss


I have none left, it's all gone
into every classroom I worked.
I want to shake my cell phone hard enough
for its head to come off when it doesn't
give me directions.

Patience? It all leached away
drop by hard mineral drop
in the cracks of limestone
crumbling under a desert sun.
I am too impatient to wait
in a boulder's shadow
for cool evening or your reply,
there is no benefit of doubt
no one will hear my answer
or catch the lizard scurrying away.

The room is empty finally
all the listeners gone
no one waits for me.
It's a mistake to think
time allows a pause now
just when I need to speak
impatient of delays.


* * * * *

Emily Strauss has an M.A. in English, but is self-taught in poetry, which she has written since college. Over 500 of her poems appear in a wide variety of online venues and in anthologies, in the U.S. and abroad. She is a Best of the Net and twice a Pushcart nominee. She is interested in the American West and the narratives of people and places around her. She is a retired teacher living in Oregon.