Song About the Blue Chair
It’s the blue chair
I insist on
dragging out to the pasture the first summer
after the blueness inside,
after walking through bad dreams all day long
for months, after saying No
to the woman with the folder. No, not voices.
Not exactly true, but the best answer
I could give and still keep
what might be true about my life
if it weren’t all going
up
in smoke around me. Blue smoke,
and fitting, then, to sit in the pasture
in the blue chair
which had a smoky horse smell,
its upholstery damp and faded.
I do not mention the singing
or else it will stop.
But it’s the singing that makes me believe
it’s possible to put my hand inside my chest
and loosen my heart with my fingers,
as if the love is just tangled in it,
like a snarl in hair.
No one else hears it. No matter.
The
trees are doing their job
of pulling the darkness down to the earth,
pulling the blue out of the sky
until all around us we’re pressed to the ground.
Here in the pasture there are other things I know.
The horse is dreaming the girl again.
He pulls her to him. Look
how he lifts his head,
the wind sending his voice flying.
All this
to sing the heart back to the body,
tying me to this earth
where doing the right thing means just sitting
and breathing
in the blue chair, my heart still out there in the trees.
--from Sow's Ear