At the edge of the yard, where weeds
choose for themselves how tall to grow,
an old chair tilts toward the lilac bush,
as if it stopped mid-thought
and never bothered to finish.
It isn’t in the way.
Nothing asks that it be moved.
Grass climbs around its legs
without argument.
One rung is missing. Another gives
when a hand presses down.
The wood carries the faint smell
of rain and long afternoons -
that plain, faithful scent
of things that have learned to remain outdoors.
I don’t try to sit.
Some objects outlive usefulness
and settle into something quieter.
The chair has taken on another role:
keeping watch over the slow work of days,
ants threading their paths through dust,
light reconsidering
what deserves attention.
Once, I and others rested there,
tired, maybe, or still enough
to hear birdsong fracture the silence
into something almost convincing.
Now the chair listens by itself.
It feels right to leave it so.
Everything needs a place
to finish becoming itself.
I stand with it for a while,
breathing cut grass and warm air,
knowing, without ceremony,
that this, too, is a kind of grave:
unmarked, unmourned,
simply left where it makes sense.
GBS jr
2012
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