Electric Chair

Ours in Nebraska is not as nice as some,
but Omaha is, of course, not Boston,
and most of the furniture here was made
heavy enough to endure a long ride
on the United Pacific. Ours is, I suppose,
Mission Oak, its blocky design straight out
of the Arts and Crafts movement, but not
as nice as a Stickley or even a Morris.
really, yet one that would comfortably fit
in a high-ceilinged Victorian parlor
somewhere in Bellevue, next to a window
creamy with lace, looking out over
the smooth Missouri; the kind of chair,
straight-backed and hard-seated, that a person
might choose to sit in to work on a speech
on the meaning of life, a chair that means
business. And yet, despite its blockiness,
it's a handsome thing, with its open arms
gleaming with oil and the black straps draped
like doilies. One can imagine a matching
smoking-stand with a rack for pipes,
a leather-bound volume of verse on one arm,
a few poems marked by red ribbons of silk.
It's a chair that belongs to the ages;
a chair, as we decorators say, that makes
a real Statement; a chair that should sit
in each Nebraskan's house, for it is a part
of our dark, oppressive furniture,
and does not have a drip-pan to clean
as those in some other states do.

Ted Kooser