Elegy for a Kitchen Table
The kitchen table
was the centerpoint of childhood,
a place of gathering,
an easel for artworks, battleground
for homework and Eden
for the creation of lifeforms
moulded from plasticine.
It was the Formica altar
on which daily meals were celebrated,
a patch of the real, ground zero
for tears and laughter
and a bench for my mother
to cut fabric into shapes
from paper patterns to sew
together into minor miracles.
The kitchen table was an arena
for games where monopoly fortunes
were won and lost on its real estate -
a surface slapped senseless
in games of “snap”, the pride
soaked soil of the Colosseum
where my Dad and I played chess.
It was a resting place for the hands
and elbows of four generations,
a soak for human pain and hurt
and wore without protest
the hot candle wax and cream
from countless birthday cakes.
It listened patiently as lives
unfolded in language.
The kitchen table was a poem
written not in words, but in wear
and tear and in the morse
of scuffs, scratches and stains
inscribed upon its surface.
I do not know its fate.
Sadly, like the pages
of most poetry,
it has been lost to time.
It deserved better.
Copyright © Paul Willason | Year Posted 2025
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