BookLife Poem: Rocking Chairs

a poem for pausing, reflecting and restoring

Rocking Chairs

Youth disdains rockers,

waiting on porches in dappled light,

or soldiering sunrooms, 

or watching newborns’ nights.

Our twenties fly by,

gobbling thirty in a stride.

Forty, fifty, we focus forward, 

All stillness swiftly set aside.

Sixty slows and seventy seeks

a gently swivel, an easy sway,

a rhythm rising from my feet, 

to thrum our worries far away.

Slapping rails beat to birdsong, 

dragging dizzying memory reels along, 

of infants’ evenings and toddlers’ tears,

of teenage heartbreak and aging’s fears.

The most sought of house’s seats

wears creaky curves upon its feet,

and rocks me back and forward to

times gone by and times yet to greet.

--Carol O’Day