Swallowed With All Hope

Greenock 04

Despite T thinking she was a bit old for it, T’s mother often sang to her a Mr. Rogers song “Let’s Thing Of Something To Do (While We’re Waiting). A jazzy little oddity from the show, Let’s Thing of Something To Do was helpful for preschool teachers dealing with Lifestyles of the Small and Antsy. Sadly, though some of us are *cough* larger now, the antsy-ness has not demonstrably decreased… – if you can’t control any or everything around you, there’s really no point in twitchiness, but astonishingly, it is not a grace that all of us receive, that ability to “possess thy soul in patience.” August is barely halfway in, and already it seems a heinously long month.

So, we wait. This poem is a slightly less catchy (?) version of Mr. Rogers’ song, which we’re holding close in the Hobbiton, in these days of waiting for phone calls, waiting for interviews, waiting for critiques, waiting to finish manuscripts and waiting for this, the summer of our discontent, and this onerous election cycle to be OVER and please God, please, please please can you give us a time machine, and we promise not to skip ahead past February of next year, if we could just miss these next eight to ten weeks???

No? ::sigh:: Okay. Waiting again, then.


Things to Do in the Belly of a Whale

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days.
Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires
with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals.
Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices.
Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way
for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review
each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments
of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you.
Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound
of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart.
Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,
where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all
the things you did and could have done. Remember
treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toes
pointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

~ by Dan Albergotti from The Boatloads. © BOA Editions, Ltd., 2008

One Reply to “Swallowed With All Hope”

  1. Still one of my favorite poems to read~not so much to live it out! Am only a few weeks ahead of you in this process, so very much feel your angst and twitchiness.

    And. While life often unfolds beautifully, I would happily kick Mr. Rilke in the shins with his gradual living into answers. Bah. When are those tickets going to fall out of the ceiling/bug display?

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