The Chairs 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.

--Billy Collins

The Charm Against the Language of Politics

Say over and over the names of things, 

the clean nouns: weeping birch, bloodstone, tanager, 

Banshee damask rose. Read field guides, atlases, 

gravestones. At the store, bless each apple 

by kind: McIntosh, Winesap, Delicious, Jonathan. 

Enunciate the vegetables and herbs: okra, calendula. 

 Go deeper into the terms of some small landscape: 

spiders, for example. Then, after a speech on 

compromising the environment for technology, 

recite the tough, silky structure of webs: 

tropical stick, ladder web, mesh web, filmy dome, funnel, 

trap door. When you have compared the candidates’ slippery

platforms, chant the spiders: comb footed, round headed, 

garden cross, feather legged, ogre faced, black widow. 

Remember that most short verbs are ethical: hatch, grow, 

spin, trap, eat. Dig deep, pronounce clearly, pull the words 

in over your head. Hole up 

for the duration.

--Veronica Patterson