The Empty Swing [sonnet]
There is something about that empty swing
which speaks to me of spaces left unfilled
by little people who no longer cling
like climbing vines nor grow like daffodils.
Some other void usurps their playful place
(where laughter once concealed the hammerblow);
now ominously haunts the interface,
while dangling hollow chairs sway to and fro.
I thought at length about that wooden seat —
how once it grew in glades of fertile joy;
but now it harbours only thoughts discrete
and broken memories of a ghostly boy.
At least a tree, when axed before full-grown,
can make a table, chair or steppingstone.
© 2011, Alan Morrison
The Naked Troubadour 