The Seat

He gave me a boat once. I want that on the account.

He gave me a boat and then he wanted a share of everything it ever found.

I knelt to that man for years

and I meant it at the time.

Then the shares got worse each year

and the reasons got shorter.

The seat.

Not furniture. A habit —

everybody standing round it

because their fathers stood there too.

So I made the case aloud

in front of the assembly,

in the open, at midday,

with a great many men behind me.

The seat.

I did not steal it in the night.

I took it in broad open light

with Tyr's own rules observed.

The old man understood it.

He'd done the same at my age.

He asked for a clean one, so I took him

from behind, at the neck, one stroke,

while he was looking at the water.

He did not know it had happened.

The seat —

and I sat in it that same night

and understood immediately

why he'd been so hard to shift.