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

Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister Pond

As for life,
I'm humbled,
I'm without words
sufficient to say

how it has been hard as flint,
and soft as a spring pond,
both of these
and over and over,

and long pale afternoons besides,
and so many mysteries
beautiful as eggs in a nest,
still unhatched

though warm and watched over
by something I have never seen –
a tree angel, perhaps,
or a ghost of holiness.

Every day I walk out into the world
to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
It suffices, it is all comfort –
along with human love,

dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
flying among the scarlet flowers.
There is hardly time to think about

stopping, and lying down at last
to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
yet to come, when
time will brim over the singular pond, and become forever,

and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
As for death,
I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
can you?

--Mary Oliver

[Photo from Stranda, Norway]

Violent Times

The world beyond my oasis

in the woods

writhes in agony, as violence

claims one life after another:

young men and women; children

and their teachers; peaceful citizens,

minding their own business, caught

in a maelstrom of bullets.

The most recent mass murder

took place in Orlando, Flordia.

But it might have been

anywhere, and even now, somewhere

as yet unknown,

there may be another individual

stoking the fires of fear,

discontent, and hatred

until they suddenly explode into gunfire and broken bodies,

leaving blood stains on pavement

that a sea of tears cannot

wash clean.

--Sydney Eddison

Keeping Silence

Where do the words

come from that

connect me to myself and

to the outside world?

The words that matter arise

from an inaccessible place

beyond the reach of will

and conscious mind.

They cannot be summoned up.

Only in peace and quiet

do they speak their names

softly into the attentive ear,

while the wind's eye

paints their portraits in color.

These are the words

for which I wait

each day.

--Sydney Eddison

[Photo of neighbor's pond in Wallingford, VT]

Go to the Limits of Your Longing

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing.
Embody me.

Flare up like a flame
and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going. No feeling is final.
Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Gratitude

Thank you for this day--

a wet, green, flowing day

that has only just begun.

Let me not waste it

with busywork and worry.

Both bear unpalatable fruits.

Instead, help me to see

what there is to see;

to listen for the sound

of Your voice in stillness

and with a calm mind.

The garden, at this moment

and in this light,

should be proof enough that 

You are speaking to me,

and I reply with due 

humility and reverence,

thank you for this day.

--Sydney Eddison

[Photo of Tsali and Riley enjoying spring sunshine.]