Exercises in Narcissism

Or... another brand-new poem by lil' old me.

In the Quiet

Matt Quarterman

I’m waiting for something, but I think
the waiting is what I’m waiting for.
I’m listening in the silence, but the silence
is what I’m waiting expectantly, hoping to hear.
The stillness and the passing of time
are also things to taste and touch.
And if the taste is tasteless,
the touch unfeeling,
this is just the taste of water,
the touch of air.
To feel the flavor of water on your tongue,
to let your skin prickle in the grip of air
is to tune your senses finely,
to calibrate them to the highest power.
So I wait silently and let the still time
be the thing I wait for in the quiet,
in the dark.




I find church to be a pretty good place to get poems, or fragments of them, or sometimes just poem-y thoughts. In the past, that's mostly because the churches I attended favored sermons on the weightier (read: lengthier) side. I've got a box chock-full of church bulletins with my scribblings in the margins.


These days the church I go to has time built into the service to reflect, think, visit, pray or whatever makes sense for you-  to do something with what you've gleaned from the service so far. It's one of my favorite parts of the entire thing, and I've found that even when the subjects aren't directly religious the frame of mind it brings is really conducive to larger, deeper thoughts.


So although I wouldn't call this a poem about faith or religion, it is about meaning, and that's what I tend to glean from church right now. These things all have meaning, and nothing is wasted, not even the waste.


Some people who read this go to church and some don't, but most people I know have been to some kind of formal religious ceremony at one point or another. Have you ever been surprised by what you got out of a church service?