mathematical equations
of newspapers on the floor
phones held up to ears
yellow erasers
and a long piece of narrow smooth white ribbon, lying abandoned on a playground.
"oh...how He loves us, oh"
Answering the phone while standing in the kitchen looking out the over-the-sink window at the snowy Connecticut winter night:
you’ll be here soon.
I’ll light a fire in the fireplace
and the soup is all ready to be eaten
whenever you finally make it here.

I wrote a letter to you, once
Before we knew each other.
Before we each knew that the other was alive
I was in senior English reading poetry and eating oranges and dreaming up purple squares on the wall.
I didn’t know you then.

that was the year I was in calc 2, with a set of a yellow drafting pencil and eraser:
blue-squared paper, neatly done diagrams and derivatives
poems written in the margins: words rubbed out, then scribbled
in again.
the eraser, long gone.
The pencil I still use, writing notes to myself on the calendar.

I pause, look up: again, you’re nearly here.

as I wait (for you) in time, I go to a museum with a red chair at the front. They don’t know it,
but it knows me: This is my Monday.

the white ribbon—it will show up in our future, is my guess.
once tied around a gift that was opened in the pavilion next to the playground, it was forgotten
and blew off
or maybe it held captive a braid in our daughter’s hair
and loosened and fell as she hung by her knees across a metal bar.

Some things like that, I’m waiting still to find out.
Where they’re from; and what they mean.
In God’s hands...
I’ll try to be patient.
Maybe, someday, we’ll know.

For now? You’re just arriving; I hear your car pulling in the driveway and, any minute,
you’ll be here.