…et vitam venturi saeculi

From time to time they’d decide 
it was high time to get ready 
and they would lay out the good china 
with care and polish all the gleaming silver 
and examine against the linen’s light 
the stemware of their consciences 
for smudges chips or cracks. 

Long weeks and months and even years 
they spent preparing to prepare, expecting 
the unexpected, making ready 
for the guest and for the long-awaited day 
and dream and talk of how the not-yet-here 
would be and how they’d know the moment 
had at long last arrived. 

Wisdom rose among them everywhere 
bristling with solemn precepts, warnings 
and prohibitions, mysteries and casuistries 
which they met with shining eyes 
and murmurs of approbation, 
for they had heard that every here is only ever 
antechamber and every evanescent now the 
anxious vestibule of future.

Now and then a faltering voice slender as 
grass slender as breath arose and died 
unheard in all the clamor, an incoherence
swiftly brought to heel by wisdom’s 
knowing smile, a speaking none could fathom 
spoken from outside solace, outside thought, the 
promptings of a tongue that they would learn to 
hear only once they’d ceased to care only once 
they were no longer there.

Featured Photo by Andrea De Santis on Unsplash