Empty Chair

The Empty Chair

by Pat Lightfoot

Your dusty bootprints in the barn

Have now begun to fade,

And all the tools sit silent

On the shelves where they were laid.

The garden lies so cold and brown,

The earth has formed a crust.

It seems to be awaiting

Your big boots to kick up dust.

Inside the house, the memories float,

Suspended in the air.

How hard it is to look toward

The corner's empty chair.

The fireplace still holds a flame.

The lamp still sheds a light,

But the chair that's in the corner

Is a lonely, empty sight.

The walls are graced with pictures

So familiar-not a change.

But the chair that's in the corner

Seems so large and bare and strange.

The mantle clutches objects

It's collected year-to-year.

It seems somehow so futile

That the "objects" still are here.

We look toward the corner,

But your presence isn't there.

Instead we see the vinyly arms

Of an empty, lonely chair.

On days when we're together

All within this living room.

We know you wouldn't want us

To focus on the gloom.

So as we look toward your chair

And nod a tender greeting.

We know that someday we will share

Another family meeting.

As we close the shades and curtains

At the end of every day.

May your empty chair remind us

That you're never far away.

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