Waiting
I am in the room, waiting to be called,
with several ahead of me in the queue.
Vincent’s iris on the wall droops
from a vase of others, not much perkier.
With each buzz and change of light
from red to green, someone gets up,
approaches the door, walks through.
I wonder what on earth they’re here for.
No one has arrived in the waiting room
since I sat down. Now there’s one left.
The pattern on the blue carpet spirals
and swirls with queasy yellows.
I try eye contact with the last man
sitting, but he leaps with the buzzer,
nods towards me, stumbles to the door,
and I wonder what I’m here on earth for.
Sharon Larkin’s poems have been widely anthologised and regularly appear in magazines and on-line. Her pamphlet Interned at the Food Factory was published by Indigo Dreams in 2019. Sharon is the Stanza representative for Gloucestershire and runs Poetry Café Refreshed, Eithon Bridge Publications and the Good Dadhood on-line poetry project. sharonlarkinjones.com and gooddadhood.com