Is/Was

Here is
the end
of the day
and the start
of a new season.
The house is quiet.
It is past our bedtime.
But she is not home yet.
There is wax in my left ear.
Sleeping alone is a challenge.
Staying in the present is hard, too.
My library book is back at the library.
But the last thing I want is to complain.
Now the snow that we waited so long for is
melting and in its place we are left with – what?

Where is the poetry in this? This is listening.

Nowadays, none of my close friends lives
within easy walking distance, but there
was a time when that was the case.
We would sometimes, after dark,
start talking and then think we
were almost done, so offer to
walk the other one home,
but then find there was
more to say, and so
walk on back again,
and keep on like
that until finally
we came to a
good place
to stop.

(Thanks to the women of Poetry Thursday
for their continuing inspiration.
I managed to teeter-totter up and down
on the "is" fulcrum for the first stanza.
After that, the past felt like a luxury.
Thanks, too, to old friends.)