The Red Chair

In flight: bird, arrow, grief.
Static: a red chair
waiting for someone in a patch of sun
that when you turn to look again is gone.
Blue jays bouncing. Early afternoon.
Urgent message of that dream at dawn
whose theme was stripping, scouring: clean, clean,

but evanescent as a breath upon
a freezing pane. So clear a space and see
in the wintry gold of three o’clock
just as shadows start to lengthen
the chair gone suddenly vermillion.
Leaf by leaf the trees turn bare.
And now a blue jay tries the empty chair.