The Chair That No One Sits In

A couple years ago, I found this chair a few blocks away with its turquoise-painted partner tossed out on the street. I walked back home to get my car and rescued both of them.

I placed the chairs on the side of the house with every intention of brightening them up with a new coat of paint but their weary and worn character grew on me. I’ve left them to naturally weather every storm just as they are — honest and true — with nothing to camouflage their straightforward authenticity.

I like them just the way they are.

Funny enough, I get a lot of compliments from neighbors who walk by and comment about how they love the way the flowers seem to embrace this simple old chair.

The Chair That No One Sits In

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out|
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,
but it might be a good idea one day
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them
for the sake of remembering
whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning —
it passes the time to wonder which.

William James Collins, Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 to 2003

(Photo credit to Enchanted Seashells)