she ain't what she used to be. She's in the twilight of her life, set aside from the new Adirondacks, pushed under the fir. Dragged from Massachusetts, a cast-off from suburbia, she's rested here for nearly 20 years. A few years ago, she lost her mate from terminal joint disease; he's now been chopped up for firewood. She creaks a bit. A surgeon replaced key wooden ligaments with metal bolts; she's no longer all natural. One doesn't know if household liability insurance covers a collapsing accident.
She's very heavy, made from oak, so heavy that this past winter her cruel and aging owner left her outside, unlike the lightweights nearby, light and constructed from some tropical wood from Southeast Asia, supposedly sustainable, that he lovingly shelters and oils each year. Even so, will they boast her longevity, or become decrepit in the Maine storms, and sustain nothing?
Please sit with me one more time.
