Pre-GBC: Anticipation
From "Poetics," by A.R. Ammons

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiraling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out
wind-glittering
totally its apparent self

I think it's a mixed blessing, anticipation. Sometimes it's better than the thing that's being anticipated; other times, it's more like cold dread. I read a statistic a long time ago about how people spend 93 percent of their lives waiting, and I always wondered how that was measured, because, really, you spend 100 percent of your life waiting for SOMETHING. Currently anticipating: the phone ringing, 2 p.m., the good news and the bad news, Rosh Hashanah food with my family, someone getting here someday, my 26th year, the leaves changing and the air getting cold.