Amy Higgins _____________________________________________________ Biding Time Our abandoned hives rest and wait for us— our lofty auditoriums, our heavenly scented coffee shops, our churches, temples, mosques, skate parks, ice rinks, swimming pools. We hereby forsake them all so that we, not our children only, but we ourselves might gather again and dance in the places we made for that purpose. Sneakers will squeak again on floors soft now with dust. We will polish them again, grow high on waxy fumes. We will fall to our knees and kiss industrial office carpets, so glad to feel their synthetic fibers and work again in cubicles, sipping mediocre coffee in quasi-productive, child-free peace. Does it surprise you how capably we sit still watch out our windows and wait, so that we with our elders, not our children only, might skip again on public grass, kayak on rivers, dance— three, four generations of flickering, happy shadows at postponed weddings. We bide our time, too, so we can mourn together our too-soon-gone, our loves.
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