The Squatter's Chair Poem by Roger K.A. Allen

The squatter's chair…
From my childhood's memory
It's always been there….
My Grandpa's study with shafts of sun
The books and legs, as if at one.

There sat the squatter's chair.

My Father too, legs in the air.
Books of Greek, Latin and French
Lexicons with binding worn
Cicero and Molière
Herodotus, Homer and Baudelaire.

There sat the squatter's chair.

This was the world my Father knew
Greek texts, enticing, strange,
A different world; a special view.
Journeys of the inner mind,
Dante and Omar Khayyam.

There sat the squatter's chair.

During his life he worked with pain
Suffering, and death…this ray of light,
With my Mother's help
Patients by day, and in the dead of night.

There stood the squatter's chair.

But at home he had a secret life.
There were us children and Mum,
But his other wife,
Was a Grecian Muse in a gown of white.

Beside the squatter's chair.

My mother toiled in her garden of love,
While he flew in his minds to lands above,
But still loved her roses, and cornflowers blue;
Her perfumed garden and ephemeral hue.

Around the squatter's chair.

But now it's all over
The garden is bare,
There is no one sitting in the squatter's chair
And his thirst for all these treasures of old,
More precious to him than silver and gold.

But when spring comes
It will be back on the lawn
Surrounded by flowers, grandchildren and Mum.
And there will he be in his father's chair
Reading and snoozing while we're having fun.

Such is the squatter's chair.

Now I sit in his chair beside my wife,
Whose perfumes and hues pervade my life.
For the squatter's chair is the chair of life.

And what of the man who is made of dust,
He lives in this garden that he loved so much.
He'll always be here, surrounded by love,
By the sunshine and peace and the turtle doves.

Such is the squatter's chair.