on waiting

My cat sits by a volume of Walt Whitman poetry, waiting, as I have sat all morning waiting to have coffee with a friend. I am disappointed. In fact, the level of my disappointment alarms me. I wonder if I overestimated the inspiration I was getting from this friend and therefore put too much emphasis on the wrong area of my life--yet again! This would not be the first time I have done such a thing. I wait too much. Women do this. They wait. They wait for men. Still in this day and age. Who can help it? Men attract us like the wild animals they are. Men personify the wilderness. Even if they are talkers, they will still often be unpredictable in their behavior. Like my cat by the Whitman volume, waiting, so too have I been. I think it's time to pick up the Whitman book and stop counting the hours. I think it's time to listen to the tick tock of my own heart, alone. I can, like Whitman, embrace all of humanity in its diversity and weirdness, but I don't have to sit by my phone like a lonely old disillusioned spinster. I feel like an over exaggerated character in a Flannery O'Connor short story. I've had way too much coffee, way too much time to think. I must read now.