qarrtsiluni

Yesterday in the woods behind the shed
I found one of the metal chairs mother placed
for you — every 30 feet, wasn’t it? —
so you could get out and walk. Tucked

between white pine and some old farm
equipment rusting under an A-frame.
Small as a schoolchild’s; poritic, thorn-sprung.
Nibbled by a decade of freezes and thaws.

All things revert to form if left long enough,
you used to say. Relieved of the burden
of bearing your weight, the chair
has given up bits of itself to the wild —

red hue to rust, smooth finish
to stubble; less matter, now, than negative
space — a crude outline of a chair, linocut,
the details gouged out. But see

how the steel fibers stretch
to bridge the gaps, as skin closes
around a wound. Tentative.
Stripped. Still holding.

by Laura Ring

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