Big Chief Sitting Room

He is as much at home as an African Elephant
in a skip.  The hand carved shaman dancer that sits
out back of the antique bric-a-brac store.
A spirit guide through past suburban taste;
to his fellow forgotten furnishings
he is the Big Chief Sitting Room -
the one with the knotted heart,
begotten by a bookshelf father
on an innocent occasional table.
They've blinkered him with a barricade
of yesterday's fixtures and fittings;
his once big-country, wide-screen view
restricted to a reservation
that has been staked out with a wardrobe,
two benches and a standard lamp.
No room there, for the birch-wood buffalo herds
or those mahogany eagles with ebony eyes
that always looked down from the wing.
The accumulated wisdom of unspoken visions
hibernates in the depth in his rings,
somewhere beneath those pock-marks
of flaking enamel he's waiting for empathy's spring.
Warmer days when he can bask in the appropriate words,
born of an atavist mind.

Graeme Bes-Green

If you've any comments on this poem, Graeme Bes-Green would be pleased to hear from you.