Photography © Bonnie Matthews Brock

 

The Zen of Rockers

If
One maple rocking chair
Sitting in a corner encourages
Patience and pondering
Slow like pouring winter honey

Then
Two wicker rockers promote intimacy,
Drawing together and pushing forward
Gritty truth and pleasant lies

And
The angry movement of three rockers
Forces the collision and blistering of ideas
Until a nugget of respect swaddles wisdom

But
Four children’s rockers signal speed
Zipping and sliding across the carpet
Each a race car, fighter jet, pink-winged dragon

Perhaps
Five rocking chairs upholstered with tapestry,
Circled like a wagon train for a book club
Stimulates camping out in e-book pages

However
Six rockers leave no room for tradition
Someone with cross eyebrows and hand on hip
Squirms displeasure at the absence of stability
“Where’s the couch for an afternoon nap?”

Then again
Seven rocking chairs show purpose.
Guests embrace the game of corralling
And regrouping chairs like so many Legos
Before rocking satisfaction.

Obviously
Eight rocking chairs in a room are silly.
Women sure to giggle at the scarlet velvet
Remembering how to sashay
While men laze back in captain of industry rockers
And blow phantom smoke circles.

Undoubtedly
Uncluttered perfection
Nine rocking chairs all providing
Shush and squeak percussion as background
For stories of being young or at war
Perhaps startled by a baby born

Time’s push-pull of reminiscence
Leads to the late-night rocker in the corner
A woman who watched the clock
Listened for your footsteps
Claimed she was up late reading.
Georgann Prochaska

 

Georgann Prochaska is the author of Murder Comes to Grindstone (Outskirts Press, 2019), the fifth installment in her Snoopypuss Mystery series. Her poetry has appeared in Gravel, What Rough Beast, and elsewhere. Prochaska grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, studied literature at Illinois State University, and had a long career teaching high school.

Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well as a school psychologist. Her images have been published in Ibbetson Street, The Somerville Times, Oddball Magazine, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, and Wild Roof Journal. Her work is archived at Harvard University, the University of Buffalo, and Poets House in NYC. Bonnie loves to capture, in images, a very wide range of subjects, and to learn and experiment with shooting and editing techniques.