The Chair

Momma’s old rocking chair is still sitting there

A piece of twine keeps it moored to the dock

Its paint is now weathered and flaking

Sometimes ghostly all alone it will rock

There’s a pole and a bracket at dock’s end

On which hangs an old rusted kerosene lamp

It watched winter come and the winter go

Now its springtime again at that old camp

It was here Momma use to sit in the evening

Waiting for Daddy as each day slipped into night

It was here Momma kept the old lamp burning

Dad used to call her his angelic guiding light

Daddy loved to go lake fishing every day

Momma would wait with her knitting bag

Though the last few years she worried more

Momma never said so for she didn’t want to nag

One day a gale sprang up out of nowhere

They say a freak of nature nothing more

That night Momma waited there all alone

In her chair on the pier beside the shore

The next day they found Dad’s lifeless body

Preacher came to break the news like they do

I went down to turn out the lantern still glowing

It seemed to turn out the light in her eyes too

Momma was buried before the first snowfall

It seems she lost the will to live alone

At night you can often see the flicker of a lantern

On the lake its soft glow is well known

‘T is it the wind that moves her old rocking chair

Or her ghost waiting for Daddy to come home