The Waiting Game
Waiting is a great leveller.
sitting in the waiting room, differences
of height and status are almost invisible:
we are equally powerless, subservient
to the unseen list and the occasional calls
of doctors and administrators.
After two and a half hours I have become one
with this silent group, each keeping quiet, holding
their pains and samples to themselves
until the hunched woman in the wheelchair calls
for a nurse to help, only to be told
today’s wait is now five hours.
Once I waited two and a half days
outside an old government office
in New Delhi, quietly conscious of the contrast
with the surrounding bustle.
The Cabinet Secretary then blamed me
for inheriting him his bureaucracy.
Here there is no blame, only patience
and suffering soon to be explained
sometimes solved or ameliorated.
We waiters do not see the remedies
or results of those who leave before us
we can only wish them well.
David Hensley is, for his sins, the Chair of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society. His poems have appeared in other magazines and the occasional anthology.