For today’s prompt from Robert Lee Brewer’s Write Better Poetry blog, write a waiting poem. It could be about waiting tables, but it can also involve any interpretation of waiting. Waiting in line at the store or for a package in the mail or whatever else someone (or something) might wait for.

Patience
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” – Robert Burns

A hawk rides updrafts
from sun-warmed asphalt
scanning for juicy vermin
emerging from their homes.

The mice forage at the edges
but sometimes a tasty seed
tempts them into the open
rewarding the hawk’s patience.

As a poet of the apex predator species
I should ally with the hawk
waiting for some careless prey
but I feel more like a mouse.

I doubt predator poets consider the emotions
of their food but mouse poets know the hawk
nearly as well as their own burrow-mates—
we know that death comes silent and sudden.

Empathy is a weakness, preventing ruthless action
but it’s also our greatest strength.