Waiting on Results

By NICHOLAS FRIEDMAN

In a dark, wood-paneled studio, I’ve sat
for three full days, an eremite with neither
cup nor cause. As hours accumulate,

I watch my thoughts return to one conjecture:
the endgame that is neither lost nor won,
but brings itself to bear on every creature

with rules we never could quite settle on.
Instead we love, and say that it’s enough,
each day approaching the meridian

which marks, invisibly, our turn from life
toward that lacuna of imagination.
We toil like pilgrims up a mortal bluff

that has no view, but is our final station.

 

[Purchase Issue 14 here.]

 

Nicholas Friedman is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife.

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Waiting on Results

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