It's Still Life

On Two Turned Legs

This is about a wicker chair,
one of four pushed round
Mum’s maple dining table,
that my not-yet-husband
broke as he leaned back
on its turned spindle legs,
the seat giving way, and

the wicker frayed, and
it was on this day that my
not-yet-husband went
old-school and asked my
father for my hand to wed,
and as my mother surveyed
the damage, she said with

the weakest voice I had
ever heard, that she could
fix it with a strap of jute,
and of course, my father,
he said Yes, to the repair,
my mother’s despair, and
a winter wedding to come.

But as I said,
this is about a wicker chair.