A STAGE WAITS
A warm afternoon
a stage waits
An owl looks on
Its legs ancient as the art
Itself
A breeze blows through the
Tousled hair of a young couple
They sigh
Holding anticipation in the sip of day
Each set of eyes
Follows the outline
of an open theatre
we wait
until a plot forms
the actor emerges
until dusk settles like a story in our limbs
here, where the scripts enclose a life
here, where we drink each line
that flows
to us,
from us
like a character we cannot forget
the scenes play
on the stages of our lives
they speak in cadence
tragedy and comedy
until the applause fills
the backdrop
of spoken
and unspoken meaning
until the theme is our own
until finally
it is something beyond ovation
that sustains us
until the last rhyming couplet
calls to us
long after we have gone
by connie post
Poet Laureate of Livermore
