Kindness is hard to define—though we recognize it immediately. Like truth it stands, lives on. But kindness is also alive, motioning, Come, listen! And just like that, there you are in the midst of it. Again.
“Nothing you have not given away
Will ever really be yours … “ —C.S. Lewis
A little girl understands without a word
a certain chair belongs to her father
even if he’s rarely home to sit in it
It takes only once being squeezed
in next to him watching but not watching tv
for as long as the big silver bowl
of popcorn lasts Becoming real
smells like popcorn and leather a cool
maroon that comes with a lap
to warm you up It’s salty
like the pits that didn’t pop I rub a finger
in them tasting the tingle Me an’ Daddy we
don’t care about greasy fingers What doesn’t matter
doesn’t matter to us
Some things never change it’s strange
how a chair becomes a gauge for life
Even when the pillowy headrest
splits open
fifty years later leather’s cracked and
worn through piping gnawed off by the dog
who loves salt Poor hassock’s cockeyed one leg
gone without a word Take a deep breath Maybe
this is about hanging on and this little girl still
thinks it doesn’t matter none of it matters
it’s just a chair
But this is real
This is the way things go
While family loads Daddy’s Chair on a trailer
memory grows something
like lungs that yearn to speak out
Watch
she’s taking a deep breath
on the day it arrives
a small handmade book
See the little girl finger
the red leather cover a book filled
with nothing Empty pages
placed in her hands and that is all
Life given
then given away written off until there is
nothing
not read and reread recited by heart
by our children’s children
A note to the reader: In Susan Cowger’s poetry, extra spaces between words serve as the pauses that punctuation normally provides. Capital letters denote the beginning of a new sentence.
The featured image, “Glen Eyrie Fireplace,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Poet and visual artist, Susan attends to image: water, sky, faces, flowers, and birds, oh the birds,
even rocks and pebbles, wherever beauty heals and anoints. Beauty ever provides when life feels
bereft. Susan has traveled to marvelous places worldwide and worked in Kenya with Spring of
Hope International. Now Susan and husband Dana live in Spokane WA. Married 47 years, they
have four children and 22 grandchildren (and yes, she finds that number rather shocking too).
A Field Guide to Cultivating ~ Essentials to Cultivating a Whole Life, Rooted in Christ, and Flourishing in Fellowship
Enjoy our gift to you as our Welcome to Cultivating! Discover the purpose of The Cultivating Project, and how you might find a "What, you too?" experience here with this fellowship of makers!
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