“Waiting (Wind of Change),” a poem by Janet Grace Riehl

In just a few days I’m making a huge move in my life and where I live. I’ll be moving from Lake County in Northern California to St. Louis, Missouri where I’ll just be an hour away from my father. Pop, 91, lives just across the river in SW Illinois, about 6 miles upriver from Alton, on the bluffs above the Mississippi River. I’ll be able to visit him every week, and still have a space of my own. My room is still there in his house for when I come to visit him.

I wrote this poem, “Waiting (Wind of Change)” last spring…knowing something was coming, something good, but I didn’t know what. Here it is now, right upon me, and the poem becomes teacher, friend, and voice of how I feel: openness and possibility…yet, vulnerable. I must remember that I am supported by Spirit. –JGR

WAITING (WIND OF CHANGE)

The wind comes up and blows the house down,
blows the house down, blows the house down.

But, when I look around, I cannot see the house.
I cannot see the timbers that supported the house.
I cannot see the joists that bound the timbers.
I can only see the doors.

The doors open onto the space where the house was.
I open the front door, heavy with carving of curled vines.
I open and walk through that door.

The wind blows through with me,
dusting away my footprints so tidily, like a French maid.

I walk to the library door and open its light maple panels.
Stride to the place where the shelves were and take out a phantom book to read.
It’s title imprinted in disappearing ink.

The winding air moves through the house to the stairway up to my old room.
I open its white door with black enamel handle
and sit down in a wispy rocker of breeze.
Waiting.