The Restoration Of Common Things

By Paul Thomas Zenki

To love an old chair
is to love many people,
to adore the sweat of their arms
and the comfort of their bowed backs.

To care for the caning
it must matter that we get weary,
but weary or not,
not too tired for beauty.

To tighten the dowel,
true the rung,
reconcile the rockers
to their lapsed vows,

these aren’t salvaging memory,
but quickening hope.
Only by somebody’s hands will the wood
bear new babes from weeping to dreams.

 

Image: Old Chairs by Steffen Zahn

 

Paul Thomas Zenki is an essayist, ghostwriter, copywriter, marketer, songwriter, and consultant living in Athens, GA.