Folding Chair

I told you then I would take it out back and
kill it with a knife but I couldn’t do it.
You stumbled upon my love today as then.
It’s a folding chair, forgotten in the woods,
rusting beside living oaks and rotting, jutting stumps, unsuitable seats.
Your mind tries to pick up its stories from the air around,
a picnicker, a hunter, absent minded yogi.
but stories are noise, excuses. Mute air transmits this year’s bird noise,
same as the moment before and the moment after this chair was left here.

You realize the years–Four legs grounded through
snow mounding and hurricanes,
the inflating and shriveling of mushrooms.
Fox and mouse, mouse and beetle, squirrel and squirrel.
Food and urges and panic. I remember loving you. There was noise.

Mute, awake air, used to being taken in and released,
doesn’t suffer seasons or fools,
doesn’t root for predator or prey, doesn’t pray that you find
your own heart among curly, restless ferns.

I still do.

–Wren Tuatha

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