corner chair

there is this wooden rocking chair, with thick magenta cushions, gold diamonds bedeck these cushions. they are not fastened to the chair by any means so when you rise, they fall. very selfless that way. laying themselves down again and again for strangers. this chair sits in the lounge type area of my library.

it has a fireplace, coffee table, and six chairs, two rockers, four teal hard library reading chairs. i prefer the rocker. and when i arrive, the rockers are usually flanking the fireplace. i move the one i want to sit in, to the very corner where the plate glass windows meet.

i turn it around so have a view in two directions of the yard, right into the swaying trees. i sit in this chair for hours at a time. reading, writing, watching.

sometimes, poems find me there. waiting on the edge of a dream. sometimes apollo. sometimes, just silence.

many times i have come to that chair with nothing, and left, hands full of words.

scurrying to the computer, i send them on. out to my people. the readers of my poems.

i am not one who waits, who plants forests like so many squirrels with their cache of nuts.

i am one who deceminates poetry almost as fast as it comes to me. i like to see it fly upon the breeze, over the tree tops, out of my hands. release it just as easily as i found it. or it found me.

it is nice to have a place to be found. when i come to this chair, sometimes it is occupied, a little girl was the last person i had to wait out. she had on dirty white sandals, a board book in hand. and her back turned away from the windows.

they have stopped rearranging the chairs after my visits and i often find the chair in the same location as i left it last. where the plate glass windows meet. though facing in. away from the trees.

i knew if i sat close to the little girl, being a strange adult i could drive her away, intimidate her with my presence. adults think this way, i am no better. but she was in my chair after all.

so i sat beside her, her brother occupied the other rocker, so i could not sit in it either. her mother called from beyond the foyer, and she reluctantly yielded the corner chair. which i promptly turned around and watched my trees.

how possessive we become when we are familiar with a place. like the third pew on the left in church. it is where i sit. for a clear, unobstructed view of the priest offering the sacraments. people have apologized for taking this, my pew, at times. and i say,

no, no. change is good.

but i lie.

if i do not have time to unwind. to sit in my chair, crosslegged. and rock myself into my wakingdreamstate, then i just get up and leave. usually my girl drags me away. sometimes she gives me hours. sometimes moments only. poems do not compress themselves into moments. sometimes they need to be coaxed out of silence by the gentle sway of a few trees and a rocking chair. sometimes they reward my silence with their presence. sometimes they do not come at all.

so i go to the chair in the corner today, hopefully, just as the library opens, when it is most quiet. and there i will rock and tend my waking dreams as a gardner his roses. there i will find the muse, perhaps she'll speak.