Ladychair
It was difficult to tell where the
Chair ended and she began.
She looked as if a giant hand
Casually draped a shawl over the chair.
Fibers of living, loving, hoping
Anger, frustration,despair -
All woven into the shapeless fabric -
Waiting,waiting,waiting,wasting.
by: Martha Hughes
¬¬¬¬¬¬¬LadyChair¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
Granny Collette
Was a memory in a chair
From the Foley's store,
Modern for the times,
a deep rose made of odd cloth with small loops
Of nylon
that was new cloth, so odd cloth for those times.
Her days were spent sitting there.
When before, she would fry an egg
The same as ham,
black and forever,
dropping it from on high into black iron
skillet glowing red from gas flames,
spattering lace egg in all
direction,
God bless her poor old soul before it was constantly
pointed out that it was not the new way of doing a thing.
Meat did no longer require such treatment to kill what lived
within,
eggs were cleaned at the store.
So she quit fixing
the children's breakfast,
just as she had quit so much else that
had been pointed out as wrong for new times.
All she would eat now was a small glass of cold buttermilk with
saltine crackers,
and
Her days were spent sitting there.
Standing at the kitchen sink hour after hour,
pealing or
preparing,
snapping a bean or shelling a black eyed pea,
but mostly staring
off into the distance
and into the past as she sung about in that sweet by and by until the
day finally came when she slipped back to time gone by
and let the paring knife slip,
taking a place in her hand.
She would have doctored it with coal-oil and packed
it with spider-web in days past,
never slowing to think more of
it than the time taken to do it,
but now was a different time
and out of concern she was regulated to lighter task and
besides,
it would give her more time to just relax
and rock in her new over-stuffed,
deep-rose Foley chair.
Her days were spent sitting there.
But that window at the sink,-- with its view of the garden
tended row after row
by the Hungarian strange man Louie Pussock,
who lived it the little domed shepherds wagon at the edge of the
junk-yard
and she fixed a (paper) plate for every suppertime to be delivered by
kid;
(Tommy, Ronnie or Me.)
and covered with foil,
whether he was home or away,
sober enough to answer or not,
laying and snoring in the hovel called home,
on the shelf across the back
and covered with all the clothes and cloth that he owned,
plus other things as well as being his bed.
( "Just put it on the step, then.")
because he would find it when he awoke or got home,-- was still
her, 'Spot.' to stand and look out and maybe do a dish or maybe
not,
but always with that far-away look
and singing all about in that
sweet by and by.
Looking back to a place in the past,
Because her days had been spent there.
From that window could also be seen the chicken coops
and the feed house
and most of the long rows of that horse-plowed garden
and the road that was Shepard's road
and now called Shepard Drive as it was traveled more and more each
passing year,
so that when she would look the near view,
returning from that far-a-way
(and that sweet by and by) look and say
I wonder who that is going up the road this time of day,
it would be dismissed or pointed out as silly for all the new traffic
on that highway.
"Why don't you sit down, Mama"
was the question most ask these days.
Until her life was spent, sitting there.
It took a lot of time and trouble to nudge her away from a sink full
of dishes,
(she may break a glass and cut herself!)
toward that new Foley's chair,
taking the cup-towel from her hand;
Guiding, nudging, leading.
(to that beautiful shore?)
"I'll Do IT, Mama! Just go rest yourself!---sit in your new Foley
chair."
Until finally she did, move into that new Foley's chair,
and into her mind.
Where she would sit and looked that far-a-way look
into that piney-woods cabin of the big thicket's days long past,
and back to times of being in and then raising broods of family
and making due with what was in hand
and allowed in that sweet
by and by.
She would still eat a bite, when you fed her,
though not enough to keep a bird alive,
and she would never rock
that new Foley chair.
But she rocked just ever so much,
(If you looked hard enough you could see it,)
and still brighten and light up a little over taste of buttermilk
soaked crackers placed in her mouth,
but never come all the way back,
with her right hand scratching all the loops under her fingers into a
fine fleecy pelt of nylon that looked odd and out of place on the arm of
her new Foley's chair.
Her days were just spent sitting there.
Year after year came
and went with granny sitting there scratching that pelt into longer and
finer nylon fibers,
and rocking ever so slightly
in herself and her mind,
though you'd never tell less you looked awful close,
and never a word or a song or a verse was heard of that sweet by and
by,
or the peace on that beautiful shore,
as she sank deeper and became smaller and formed to that chair as it
folded around her
and faded to match a color she faded from
and toward the color
of the buttermilk she smelled like.
Until finally,
the day arrived everyone knew was coming.
Granny Collette's life was spent,
while sitting in that
new Foley's chair.
Butch