Waiting For The Stray Poem by Ernest Hilbert

You can sit and wait. You can wait for it
In dusted corners. You can watch the street fill
With bright leaves, swing flash beams through the park,
Incited by worry to the end of your wits.
Or, again, you can simply sit, quite still.
It will feel as though you were sent into the dark
From an island where the sun baked rock and lured
Hurt light from the sea. Strange blossoms blow to
Earth like flakes of ash and you wait for news
From a stranger. Nothing helps. You wait for
A warm rain to pass, at last. You walk to
The trolley-stop, past all the flyers you
Taped up, damp now, smeared photo of the stray
On each scratched steel lamppost along the way.