When we love a wanderer,
We wait for footsteps
That may, or may not, come:
First the hours-the-days;
Then-years. Then, never.
Yet always we do know
Whereof we wait:
The creaking gate
The scraping on the steps
And at the door the level gaze;
For these we wait to know
The roving one is home.
...
So it's the space between
The wishing and the end
That is the true unknown;
The massive world's timekeeping
And our own agile flow
Never to blend.
And thus we care,
And thus we live
Not for the end
(Since it is not unknown),
It is the wait, creative
Life and love in full;
Unfinished, uncertain, unknown,
Yet mocking the known end
That comes sooner,
Later, or not at all.

-from "Between-Living" by Edith Tiempo, Beyond, Extensions-


We wait for the end while we pray for it not to come; and yet, with its arrival comes freedom from whatever it is we want to be freed from. While waiting, we do not think of that freedom, do not know that it is what comes with the end.

Oh, but here it comes,

the end.