April 2017
Mary McCarthy
mmccarthy161@gmail.com
I spent most of my working life as a Registered Nurse, but have always been a writer and artist. I recently moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, and am hoping to devote more and more time to poetry and art, living here near the water, which has always brought me peace and inspiration. Lately I have had a chapbook published by Praxis journal online—“Things I Was Told Not to Think About” available as a free download.​

In the Waiting Room


While his mother waits
The baby stares at me
With eyes wide and alert
Wise and calm
As the recumbent Buddha
Resting in an amplitude of grace
 
Long fallen from that holy wordless place
I crouch in the shadow
Of my sentences
Trading words like beads
On a broken abacus
Like stones too round to stack
That shift and shift
Loose as my thoughts
That scramble after them
Failing to find sure footing
In a room where nothing’s steady
As that infant gaze

This appeared in Third Wednesday, Winter 2013
©2017 Mary McCarthy
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