Chair

You used to believe in me. 

There were moments 

When nothing mattered 

Except for the goodness you saw 

And in my potential 

You thought 

That your vision 

(the good things in me) 

Would hum under the weight 

Of heavy sands 

Of coarse papers 

So 

You stripped away 

Parts of me. 

Cleaned off the broken fragments 

Of leaded, toxic paint 

Old and shredded greens 

Revealing 

An essence I hadn’t been forced to face 

Since I was made by the hand 

Of my creator 

It was too much 

For either of us to see 

So you put me away 

In the dark side of storage 

And forgot about me. 

Here and there 

Glimmers of what might 

Have been 

Would tumble through your waking dreams 

(…solid brass screws over a humming and honed pecan stain) 

But those too 

Were gone. 

And on 

You moved to the next thing. 

Until 

There were no more excuses 

No more places to hide 

Or reasons why 

It couldn’t be 

Dusted me off 

Placed in a sea 

Of light 

And mightily 

Worked again to smooth out the rough lumps 

The inconsistencies 

You once saw as “character” 

You made me hum 

Like the object you had envisioned 

When you first picked me up 

And bought me for less than I was asked for 

But it wasn’t enough 

And your work 

While visible 

Has left me as nothing more 

Than an object 

Sitting beneath the table 

Of imaginary maps 

Waiting to be used 

And to have my value seen 

Like you did before 

© Fergus W. Clare, 2014

    All Rights Reserved

Tutankhamun's Chair, Ancient Egypt, 13th C. BC
Photo by Jon Bodsworth
Wikimedia Commons from the Egypt Archive website
Cairo Museum