TONY GLOEGGLER

WAITING

and hoping your father
finishes his after dinner
cigarette before it grows
too dark to play catch

for the ringing in your pressed
to the phone ear to stop
so Claire Kerchoff finally
picks up and says yes,
she’d love to go with you
to the 8th Grade dance

through a 3 day weekend
before you can check
the board outside
your high school gym
to see if you made
the cut. Yes, baseball,
hell no, basketball

those lengthening moments
for Erica to whisper
she loves you too
the first time you ever
heard those three words
fall out of your mouth

playing that Tom Petty song
easing in with Byrdsy jingle
jangle guitars, and his voice,
nothing but nasal sneer,
bursting in at full throttle,
warning that The Wa-aa-ting
is the hardest part

wa-aa-ting through the slow
months of recovery from open
heart surgery, kidney transplant
so you can begin to steadily
reclaim parts of your life back

humming along to Bob Marley’s
Waiting In Vain , backing it up
with The Grateful Dead’s Waiting
For A Miracle while reading
Waiting for God Damn Godot
because you know Suzanne will
never leave her boyfriend,
live happily ever after with you

watching the sun go down
outside your window, looking
at your cell phone, hoping
she will call saying she’ll be over
In a bit so you can take her
a few more times from behind.

Tony Gloeggler is a life-long resident of NYC who managed group homes for the mentally challenged for over 40 years. His poems have appeared in Rattle, New Ohio Review, Raleigh Review, BODY, Gargoyle and Sho, His most recent collection, What Kind Of Man with NYQ Books, was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize and Here on Earth is forthcoming on NYQ Books.