A Chair In The Rain Poem by Lee Wilkinson

On the first
morning
of spring she
drags the white wicker
chair into the
shaft of sunlight that
divides
the almond tree
and the
ornamental plum.
She
sits thawing her wintersoaked
bones; keeping company with Dylan
Thomas and William
Carlos Williams until
the warmth is sucked
out of the air by
the first
shadows.

When he gets home she
casts aside her books
and encircles him with
a smiling hug. She kisses
him.

When he strides out
with their Labrador
at heel
he does not notice the chair
that still sits in the
spot where she had left it,
for he is breathing the air
of poets.

The next day fickle spring
brings a memory of
winter and the air is charged
with drizzle.
She stays in bed with
tea and Poe.

In the evening, while washing
up, he catches the luminescence
of the little white chair through
the kitchen window and
considers bringing it in. He
doesn't.
The drizzle has sheeted
into rain. She has progressed to
Plath.
He sleeps
alone.

The chair sits silent
witness to summer barbecues.
A gaggle of friends come
and go. It is the season
of Chardonnay smiles.
She now keeps company
with the Romantics.
He watches
the late news.
She wishes that
he would bring the
chair in. He
wishes that she
had never left
it out.

The sun cracks, then
starts to peel the paint
from the chair. Grass
and weeds
begin to marry
into its wicker
frame.
He mows around it.

In the autumn he brings
her flowers and
champagne.
They both forget, for a
while, about
the chair whose
paint has
now ceased to
peel with
the new dullness of the
sun.
Outside its decay
seems
halted, but the moist
autumn air
works its way into
summerformed
cracks and its wood
begins a slow rot
from within.

They think of
names. She wants to
decorate the spare
room. He thinks
it's too early. They laugh
and she gets her way. She reads
Kitzinger. He
worries about
the environment.
The chair is now so much
a part of the garden that neither
of them notice it
anymore.
Inside
it is so rotted that
the grass and weeds are
now the frame that
holds it up.

Winter wakes her
one morning with a speck
of blood that soon
becomes a trickle, like
the rain
outside.
They stop
talking
about names.
She no longer
reads.
He goes into the
garden; tries to rip out
the chair
that has been so
tightly
lashed to it.

The chair
falls
apart
in his
hands.