Green Chairs [after Donald Hall] 1. In a time when families came from farms, my mother was born at home, with her grandmother attending, standing by to boil water and wrap a newborn in soft blankets by the kitchen fire. Donald Hall wrote of his family farm in his youth; he likely did not know that one day his poems would incite The New Yorker to publish his work 2. ranging over many years of verse, of non-fiction accounts of his life, poetry written by him and Jane, his student who loved and wrote poems, who tragically died before her time. He told and retold of his journey through a marriage and children, divorced - floundering through an alcohol haze, falling in love, only to lose her - 3. too soon she was taken, leaving him alone once again, yet decades passed before he grieved to full extent, he wrote of this, reminiscing their life, daily routine of long walks, writing each morning close to Ragged Mountain in his family’s farmhouse with green chairs, set on an open porch, rocking chairs, the imprinted seats of ancestors . 4. My father’s family farm, in a town near enough to my mother’s - they did not meet there, but nearby at the lake, Ontario cottages owned by respective family aunts, young teenaged neighbors canoed and swam alongside rocky shore, blue-green algae coated boulders too slippery to climb on; they often jumped off the public pier 5. into icy-cold water, refreshed after chores were done: hay in the loft, cows milked, water toughs filled from metal pails; they were allowed time at the lake. Donald Hall wrote Ox-Cart Man, about survival and hard work, known by most farmers and families in rural communities, who knew no diff’rent other than livestock and crops growing 6. to sustain their families, excess brought to market, goods purchased in kind helped to maintain their economy. My father’s farm grew asparagus, his uncle overseeing acres while in a garden nearby, two chairs and table – machined metal painted green, that my father kept with him after leaving home then repainting them white, 7. and finally green again at the last. Hall wrote of Kurt, of Merz and baseball, idols like Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, players long dead, remembered ball games, pitchers and catchers propelled the sport from idyllic radio broadcasts to farm families who could not see players round bases, nor attend games, but loved baseball heroes all the same. 8. Did Hall know that he would be honored, published and exalted, a poet lauded as a U.S. Laureate, author who loved solitude in youth, prep school and college, honing his craft? His great love lost, isolated to recount life in verse, storyteller of Eagle Pond, a family home where words emerged in grand scale, floated 9. to the surface, alliterative algae on the pond, fodder to feed a muse, hungry to embrace the past, wrought with anguish and loss, as artist he drew us into his world, the farm loved by two poets stretched out before his readers, budding poets who write of simpler times, their memories and perhaps muse on Hall’s green farmhouse chairs. Poets’Touchstone 2019 Julie A. Dickson *Note- I was commissioned to write a 9 stanza, 9 line, 9 syllable poem in honor of Donal Hall after his death by the editor of the Poets'Touchstone
