Patience is a virtue
Virtue is a grace
Grace is a little girl
Who wouldn’t wash her face.
Patience, along with the others,
Chastity, Temperance, Charity,
Diligence, Kindness and Humility,
was seen, particularly by the Victorians,
as a virtue ideally suited to little girls.
We were still all taught, directly or indirectly, to wait.
Mostly for our Prince to come.
The trouble with Patience is that it is a virtue
only in a world in which Time
is on your side.
Which it rarely is for little girls.
I still try to practise it.
I wait, calmly, for things to happen.
But then, when they still don’t,
my patience hasn’t actually helped at all..
all it has done has been to make the time pass
faster
And the problem in the first place is how fast it passes..
How soon it is gone.
Perhaps I will get my reward in Heaven.
I shall have to wait and see.
