The Waiting Room

In the quiet drumbeat of aging humanity
they arrive in droves, like supplicants
resembling those of faith but not within
the rarefied confines of holy orders but
rather in that dependency and hope they
place in another, tried-and-true faith in the
healing powers of modern medicine and
medical technology to offer their frail
ebbing senses renewal at the very least
a kind of bridging loan enhancing failing
faculties; eyesight, hearing, ambulation
minds, a temporary reprieve before that
inevitable finality of surrender. The waiting
room is crowded as they silently await
opportunity for that vital consultation with
the high priest of medical miracles. The
hospital is charged with the energy of
expectation as its personnel feverishly
tend to the halt, the lame, the blind, the
fearful, the aged and the aging. Those with
residual sight avert their eyes from the
spectacle of specimens whose condition
is far advanced of their own and those
without hearing are spared the sighs, groans
and complaints of those restlessly awaiting
results. Among them men clad in dragging
shorts and sandals others clinging to the
dignity of apparel able to stand the scrutiny
of their home mirrors. Women, ample flesh
bursting at the seams of their casual wear.
The morbidly obese, the wheelchair bound 
the elderly confused and accompanied find
little solace in the frenetic atmosphere 
around them, their own minds fixated on 
solutions extending, improving their lives 
as they approach the finality of its end.