The Old Couch

The old couch, broken––

Don't make them like they used to.

It's not the years, it's the mileage.

Held together by a battleship 

slipcover in the front parlor:

well-kept for tea time and ritual,

of a blue that would not fade. 

Brought from Boston to a perfect village,

for decades it sat watching Main Street,

observing, waiting

for those occasions that brought 

her family into the sanctum.

Then stored in a shed of mice and things:

["The best laid schemes of mice and men

Go oft awry," wrote Robert Burns.]

Once removed in the cold winter sunlight,

brought from New England to Kentucky,

her true age revealed:

a broken back, the skin slack and worn.

The faded trappings of a dowager,
soon to be tossed on a funeral pyre.

Why do I mourn tattered silk and old wood?

© Catherine Seiberling Pond

 You come back when you're ready!

Catherine