Life is a Bench Return to <Poems and Stuff>
They say that life is a bench or maybe
Some other B-word maybe best forgot
In this age of correctness, where ably
Chosen words are condemned outright.... or not.
If life is a bench, and you are sat on,
Yourself, or perhaps you did the sitting,
Your choice and chance, rejoiced or rued, now gone,
Have made that bench for you, unremitting.
Fate had placed your bench to wait for you
Ere pastoral field or some city park,
Bus stop or classroom or the church's pew.
Tis still there, empty, when each day goes dark.
Where you sit on the matter matters not;
A hole in the outhouse and district court,
Your call, in the end is not worth a squat.
Life does not wait for your final retort.
Who sits on your bench might matter a bit,
Crowding or fowling or taking up space.
Our hope is for friends and family to sit
and share what should be our basic home base.
-- Tom Spears, 2014 Return to <Poems and Stuff>