OUR TABLE

 

~For Mother~

Your table bore the bread of the years, 

and divided it amongst our congregated selves. 

Its grains and its cuts, its grooves, and stains

are the emblems of our appetites and good cheer, 

our joys and now our aging, and when it gathered 

us together and collected all our stories,

it made a banquet of remembrance.

Because of you, it is the fulcrum at our center,

our pivot of gravity, our Tabula Rasa

upon which is written the biography

of all our days, it is the tablet

of our broken and unbroken ways,

the battleground of all our wars,

and the place we come to sign

each peace treaty and bitter ceasefire.

We have laid the maps of ourselves

on this very table and planned our moves

and countermoves, we have brought

our allies here, our friends, and lovers, even

our foes, and we have celebrated

the blessing of all who have come.

It has been our bridge as well as the gulf

between us, the earth as well as the harvest

of all the memories we have sown,

and it wears the relics of each feast

and festival, it conjures colors, sounds,

aromas, and tastes out of silence and absence, 

laughter hangs above it like the echoes

of our lost years, and the world's fare

has filled it up, weighed it down,

and emptied it again at the close of day,

it knows the world's woes, and ours,

it has shouldered the weight of the world,

and has held our hands through

the darkest trials of our loves and fears,

the sweet and sour grapes of our passage

have whet its appetite and stained its face,

but the table endures and binds us

one to one, each to all, and all to you, dear mother.