The Chairs That No One Sits In

THE CHAIRS THAT NO ONE SITS IN
by Billy Collins from Horoscopes for the Dead (Random House)

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.

 

 

    Chairs that I don't sit in are leaning against the dogwood tree in the back yard, books I don't read are stacked two deep on shelves, recipes I haven't tried are spilling out of an accordian folder, poems I haven't written are tucked in the corners of my mind.

 

    But today, today is an opportunity to do something that has been left undone . . .

 

What will you do with the opportunity you have today?

Today - Billy Collins Sunday

TODAY
by Billy Collins from Nine Horses (Random House)

If ever there were a spring day so perfect,

so uplifted by a warm intermittent breeze

that it made you want to throw

open all the windows in the house

and unlatch the door to the canary's cage,

indeed, rip the little door from its jamb,

a day when the cool brick paths

and the garden bursting with peonies

seemed so etched in sunlight

that you felt like taking

a hammer to the glass paperweight

on the living room end table,

releasing the inhabitants

from their snow-covered cottage

so they could walk out,

holding hands and squinting

into this larger dome of blue and white,

well, today is just that kind of day.

 

    I realize it isn't officially spring yet, but the landscape in the mid-Atlantic doesn't seem to realize that.  Although it's still too early for peonies, the garden is bursting with flashes of yellow-- forsythia, daffodils, crocuses, jonquils.  The cherry blossoms up the street are just starting to open, magnolias are in full bloom, and red buds paint purple splashes among the dark bare oak trees in the woods.  Today is a day for releasing myself to revel in its splendor.  Maybe I'll walk the labyrinth at Brookside Gardens.  Or convince a friend whom I'm meeting for coffee this afternoon that we should get it to go,and take a stroll through my favorite tiny park in Kensington.  Perhaps I'll just have my morning tea on the front porch and sit and watch the traffic and people pass by while pretending to be engrossed in a book.  Today is full of so many possibilities . . .

 

How are you going to release yourself to make the most of it?