The two faced god of Not-Yet

Not-Yet by Jane Hirshfield from Lives of the Heart (Harper Collins)
Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-

Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.

Janus, the Roman god of beginnings and endings
One face looks into the past, one into the future

I imagine the god of Not-Yet is a cousin of the Roman god Janus.  The two-faced family resemblance is certainly there, but instead of looking into opposite directions, both of Not-Yet's faces look into the future.

One is as Hirshfield describes-- the Not-Yet face that sees our future and in reminding us that we are not-yet-lost, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-dead, and reminds us that we should embrace our lives while we still can.

The other face, though, looks at the things we haven't accomplished yet, the not-yets that we use as excuses, that keep us from embracing the present-- not yet rich, not yet successful, not yet thin, not yet partnered, not yet patient, not yet forgiving, not yet healthy, not yet whole, not yet holy. 

That's the god of Not-Yet who has overstayed his welcome.  The one I won't be inviting to stay.