This month's poem was chosen by Rachel McGladdery who says of it, "I chose it because it was hugely evocative, moved me to feel someone else's memories, was warm and affectionate and just ineffably beautiful. I read it down to the phone to my mum to see what she thought and couldn't actually get to the end because of the HUGE lump in my throat...how's that for moving?"

To find out more aabout David and his work: http://www.writeoutloud.net/poets/davidcooke

YOUR CHAIR

After half a lifetime of early starts,
and a few fly years that made you money,
you finally softened round the edges
and eased back, prosperous, into your chair.

It's there in our mother's place: a threadbare
seat of judgment, battered in the mayhem
of a clattery open house, its wrecked guts
sagging, its two arm-rests coming adrift.

And fixed immovably in that still centre
you watched the racing on TV, shushed out
our conversations, as Michael O'Hare's
gabble of names stampeded to its climax.

Another windfall? Or a better prize –
To know you were flush enough for losers
not to matter, in a different country
to have attained a gruff serenity.

That chair has hoarded the words you uttered,
and releasing them at times, as we make
our late decisions, can fill up a room
with some cagey, warm, and toil-inflected phrase.

Your chair is true North on a map of memory,
and points out paths, the sanctioned ways still worth
your approbation, the cuteness implied
in Whatever would your father have thought?