Patina

The chair arrives with splintered arms,
Its maker’s hands, a cipher lost,
A tale of sweat in workshop psalms,
Its oak records what time has glossed.
Each nick a map, an infant’s grasp,
Each stain a spill from cups of clay,
It faced the squalls that bend the sap,
A sentinel of yesterday.  

The quilt descends, its patches sewn,
By fingers gnarled with winter’s bite,
A lattice born of thread unknown,
Its dyes hold dusk in fading sheen.
The squares enclose a birth, a vow,
A fever broken by the aurora,
It wraps the new as once the now,
A shroud of then forever drawn.  

A locket falls from attic powder,
Its clasp a snag of iron will,
The face within escapes the rust,
A gaze that bends through ages still.
It clicked shut on a soldier’s sigh,
Then dangled free through market din,
Its chain now lulls a child’s reply,
To etch her mark where his begin.  

The desk rolls down, its drawers askew,
Ink-blotted scars from quills long snapped,
A ledger’s freight it once withdrew,
Now holds a poet’s lines entrapped.
The wood recalls a merchant’s haste,
A scholar’s lamp through midnight burned,
It bears the young one’s chalky waste,
A canvas etched and then sojourned.  

A horn arrives, its brass gone dull,
Once lifted high in harvest cheer,
Its curve contains a village lull,
A call that fields no longer hear.
The blast that rallied aurora to toil,
Now pipes a tune by firelight played,
Each note reshapes the primordial soil,
A timbre new with youth remade.  

The clock ticks on, its gears a maze,
Forged hot by smiths in aprons coarse,
Its chime unwinds the elder days,
A life spent well with no remorse.
It counted out a widow’s pace,
Then marked a birth in candle gleam,
Now tracks a dreamer’s restless chase,
Its hands point where the past must go.  

A bowl is passed, its glaze chipped thin,
Kiln-fired once by steady flame,
It cradled grain through famine’s grin,
A the made-to-hold christened with no name.
The hands that scooped its warmth are gone,
Yet children knead its edge anew,
Its curve collects what years have drawn,
A cup of now and then in view.  

The trunk slumps low, its hinges groan,
A dowry’s freight in linen pressed,
Its planks from trees by axes grown,
Hold scents no wind has dispossessed.
It crossed a sea, a bride’s lone stake,
Then housed a toy, a soldier’s boot,
Each owner shifts what lines remake,
A frame where eras take their root.