Saturday, January 1, 2011

THE DOLL CHAIR

People seldom sat in her,

The Doll Chair

She lived by the hearth,

Facing outward,

She partnered the television

Two sibling watchers,

One on squat claw feet,

The other a grey orb

Observing the Living Room

At my grandparents’ house,

With its worn Regency grandeur

Its well-trod carpets

And fragrances delicious and kind,

Waved inside by the swinging kitchen door.


On Christmas morning

The doll I wanted,

Had longed for

All those other seasons

Appeared in the Doll Chair,

Its small arms extended,

Next to my sister’s choice,

And our two Christmas stockings

Bulging with treats.


That was the miracle of having.


But before came the miracle of waiting.


Christmas eve,

On the foldout in Pop Pop’s study

Sister and I lay bug-eyed

While headlights from our cars

And the neighbors’ cars

Lit the darkness behind white nylon curtains

Made dancing panels on the high ceiling

And whispers came and went

Muted fluttering from the other

Regions of the limitless house.

In the mysterious night


I lie sleepless, alive to every sound.

My sister’s quiet breath beside me

I can’t wait but I do

Knowing that my wish is going to come true

That magic is about to happen

I am present to the velvet darkness

In an ever-new, ever changing way.


And it seems to me now

That my child mind believed less in Santa

Than in my ability to make appear,

By my dreaming and my desiring,

The most cherished of earthly things.

The Doll Chair a portal

For the bright, the new, the shining.


She is mother love

She is the full-petaled rose of possibility

Of gifting, of renewal.

On a New Year’s morning she reminds me of what is gone

And the possibility of what yet might be

Unseen now

But roiling in my heart to appear

Tiny flashes of clarity in the sleepless night

Reassurance of what may come

What may yet come.


copyright cathylarsonsky jan 2011