An empty bench isn't only a empty bench, also it is the absence of a little girl looking at the river, of an old man trying to read in the small waves messages of yesterday, of lovers separated by a final goodbye...
Yes, an empty bench is not only an empty bench in Spring.

Rambunctious birds celebrating Spring
which only has but talk about arrival,
purple crocuses, timidly raising heads
to see, like groundhogs, their shadows
in the snow caused by the promised sun.

The smelting snow gracious rivulets
will travel to where only they know,
carrying messages picked on their way,
secrets that Winter wished to be told
and that every Spring never understood.

A bald eagle took a fly to the skies and
with a thermal wave, to keep station,
over its dominions he watched it all,
as the first of bears came to the river
looking hungrily for a fish or maybe two.

The dirty summer river was now icy blue,
no yet the rains had come with the brown,
and thunder hadn’t disturbed the squirrels
which had for a few weeks enough nuts,
in a dormant forest, yet, without a noise.

The wood bench by the river was now dry,
one could sit there contemplating the world
as I did, thinking what the river was saying
because I was a lonely deaf where I stood,
she, was the one that wasn’t there, oh God!