The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

In losing you I lost my sun and moon
And all the stars that blessed my lonely night.
I lost the hope of Spring, the joy of June,
The Autumn’s peace, the Winter’s firelight.
I lost the zest of living, the sweet sense
Expectant of your step, your smile, your kiss;
I lost all hope and fear and keen suspense
For this cold calm, sans agony, sans bliss.
I lost the rainbow’s gold, the silver key
That gave me freedom of my town of dreams;
I lost the path that leads to Faërie
By beechen glades and heron-haunted streams.
I lost the master word, dear love, the clue
That threads the maze of life when I lost you. 

Along the Eastern shore the low waves creep,
   Making a ceaseless music on the sand,
   A song that gulls and curlews understand,
   The lullaby that sings the day to sleep.
A thousand miles afar, the grim pines keep
   Unending watch upon a shoreless land,
   Yet through their tops, swept by some wizard hand,
   The sound of surf comes singing up the steep.
Sweet, thou canst hear the tidal litany;
   I, mid the pines land-wearied, may but dream
   Of the far shore; but though the distance seem
Between us fixed, impassable, to me
   Cometh thy soul’s voice, chanting love’s old theme,
   And mine doth answer, as the pines the sea.

¹⁸⁸⁵

A long, slow dusk on the day before solstice—
I did it, I did it, I did it: song of the pond frogs.
Shrill piping of the cliff swallows, fluting of a vireo,
Raspy song of the Bewick’s wren. So commotion
In the trees! These evenings of long light
Must be high festival to them. It’s the time
When the light seems tender in the needles
Of the pine, the shimmer of the aspen leaves
Seems kindly on the cliff face, gleams
On the patches and gullies of snow summer
Hasn’t touched yet. And the creek is flush
With life, streams of snow melt cascading down
The glacial spills of granite in a turbulence
The ouzel, picking off insects in the spray,
Seems thrilled by, water on water funneling,
Foam on foam, existence pouring out
Its one meaning, which is flow. Up here,
In the last light, the vireo’s warble declares,
Repeats, falls silent. The swallows, soaring,
Dipping. They must be feeding their young
The insects they are gleaning from the pond.
And the frogs: I did it, I did it, I did it
Fall silent one by one as dark comes on.

My friends are dead who were

the arches    the pillars of my life 

the structural relief when

the world gave none.

My friends who knew me as I knew them

their bodies folded into the ground or burnt to ash.

If I got on my knees

might I lift my life as a turtle carries her home?  

Who if I cried out would hear me?

My friends—with whom I might have spoken of this—are gone.

Gold-brown upon the sated flood
The rock-vine clusters lift and sway:
Vast wings above the lambent waters brood
Of sullen day.

A waste of waters ruthlessly
Sways and uplifts its weedy mane,
Where brooding day stares down upon the sea
In dull disdain.

Uplift and sway, O golden vine,
Thy clustered fruits to love's full flood,
Lambent and vast and ruthless as is thine
Incertitude.