Maura Stanton
Immortal Sofa
“I
sing the sofa”—William Cowper
When I see sofas hauled from student dumps,
and set out on the curb in heavy showers,
I know it’s spring. Time to clear out of
here,
start life again with nothing but a suitcase.
But here’s my house. Yes, I admit
I’m staying.
My sofa won’t be going out the door.
Instead I join the cat asleep on the afghan,
warm my hands on a hot mug of tea,
and remember my mother-in-law’s rowhouse
in
glass ash trays deep as bird baths, cattails
dried to mauve, stuck in a Chinese vase.
No wonder I vowed never to own anything,
no Turkish carpets, lamps, or cabinets,
especially not a long, three-cushion sofa
covered in protective dull green serge,
antimacassars of yellow lace on the armrests.
Ah, but my mother-in-law secretly longed
to buy an off-white love-seat at Sears
and here was her chance to finally give away
a ten-year old sofa in perfect condition.
Too poor to refuse, my husband and I
U-hauled the sofa down to
where it mildewed in storage for a year
until we found a larger place to live.
We used to lounge, legs tangled, after work,
drinking gimlets, talking about dream cities.
Slowly the sofa rose up, carrying us
out the sliding doors of our apartment.
Far below we’d see the twinkling lights
of
mowed sweeps of battlefields and cemeteries
getting smaller as the sofa flew higher,
rushing along the highways of air, headed
for the Andes, or the jungles of
And sometimes we’d be set down, gently,
on the outskirts of
dazed by herds of llama, or red cattle
that parted to sweep past our magic sofa.
Or we might float over a foaming waterfall
inches above a rainbow, giddy and dizzy,
scared but safe on our familiar cushions.
But when we finally moved to
owners of beds, tables, desks, and chairs
and boxes of things of all sorts and sizes,
we took the dirty cover off the sofa,
discovering chartreuse satin brocade.
Yet though it looked shiny and brand-new
against the ugly black and white swirled carpet
of our rented bungalow in Hell,
the sofa couldn’t fly under the weight
of two hearts heavy as the redwood
sliced and polished into our coffee table.
We’d stumble home from work with umbrellas,
turn the cold knob on the gas space-heater,
then head to bed. So maybe we were dreaming
suddenly to find new jobs under palms
in
arriving to sit on her old sofa, shrunken
as if she’d stepped from a fun-house
mirror,
remarking on the good quality of the fabric.
Then she was dead, outlived by the sofa
which moved into this house in
barely fitting through the angled hallway.
Clawed by cats, flea-sprayed, recovered
in blue velvet, the sofa sags and dips
from indentations of spines and buttocks
of all the people who’ve ever sat here
to talk, or read, or put their feet up,
one warm impression after another
loosening, crushing, squashing, flattening.
Once we tried to buy a stylish sofa
but though the workmen unhinged the door
and laid it flat in the snow, they couldn’t
wedge the new one inside, and took it back,
leaving this one safe for years to come.
How many books have I read sitting here?
How many times have I returned from trips
glad to fling myself on these battered cushions?
If ever I get to wander the roomy clouds
of Heaven, my golden cup of nectar
brimming over, I’ll look for my sofa.
I think I’ll find it far from the incense
and the loud hosannas, a quiet spot
for those who’d rather doze a bit, and dream,
than sing loudly with the choirs of angels.
from Shade (