Davy Crockett Once Sat Here

Actual cash value is an ugly term, she said.
The chair was the sun, around which my
family orbited for centuries.

My mother’s home for the last five winters,
she died July just gone, god rest her soul.
She bottle-fed me, read me stories and
taught me all about life there.

Curled in it’s arms grandmother survived
the war hunkered within the hand built
air raid shelter in the garden of their terraced
house in Plymouth.

The chair almost drifted away in the flood of
Great-grandmother tears after her eldest
perished on a small South African hill in the
Battle of Spion Kop.

My great-great grandparents crossed the Atlantic
in that chair to start to start new lives in England,
after the defeat of the American South in
the Civil War.

My great-great-great- grandfather sat in her and
chewed tobacco with Davy Crockett, or maybe
it was Davy. We’re a bit hazy on the details, but
it was before the Alamo.

Davy Crockett Once Sat Here

Hand built by William Savery in late eighteen century,
Legs replaced, seat restrung, frame repined and reglued.
Cushioning added all over and recovered in burnt orange
in the late seventies.

We put it up here for safekeeping. Your money can’t
replace it. But, we do need a new family heirloom.
The insurance loss adjuster fingered the foam arm,
and began to tap his iPad.