Sofiul Azam - Waiting for a Package

(for Linda Rogers)

Be patient. The mail is slow.
– An E-mail from LR

As I wait for a package from far-off Canada,
staying pretentiously patient in my room
with windows closed on all sides, I remember
my mother advising me on the phone
to be patient about the way futile thoughts
out of nowhere come up crowding into my mind
and the way the victims of a promise wait for Godot;
but anxiety like poison courses through my veins.

It’s something other than what seems normal;
not that it’s my mere waiting for a package
traveling lands and the wide blue waters
from hands through to other duty-bound hands
nor after scrutinizing like a garment expert
the fabric of that virtue I couldn’t yet master,
the virtue like lifting up one’s eyes to grace in the sky,
I will have a facile win over restlessness which I think
I am endowed with from my precocious birth
from my mother’s womb.

Someone says restless freaks burn as coal
in a brick-kiln furnace (isn’t it a burning inferno?)
for nightmares invented by their flights of fancy
and spread out by their mercantile policy,
thought-oriented and useless. Yes,
all these are nothing but rubbish and a load of crap
stinking throughout all the alleys of my mind.
I try to train my mind: be patient; the mail is slow.

But what is it that freezes the rush of my blood
through organic channels beneath my skin
as wise people could have said I think
of something ominous waiting for the fate of it,
a package now becoming synonymous with life?
A flat denial ain’t worth the toil in waiting.

Always I see my untrained mind wavers,
lost among the bustle of promises not kept:
shining promises turn into monsoon clouds.

Sofiul Azam

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/waiting-for-a-package/