The Kitchen Table
by Sondra Ball
We sit at the kitchen table:
eating bagels and drinking coffee,
talking.
The world begins at the kitchen table.
We set the bounties of the harvest here:
luscious strawberries,
fat biscuits,
bacon,
turnip greens.
We chase cats and dogs away from it.
Our children play under it.
They sit around it at meals,
learning how to be women,
how to be men.
We sit here with our friends,
recalling ghosts of our pasts,
dreaming visions of our futures.
We weep here over deaths
of lovers,
parents,
children,
dreams.
We laugh here
at our follies
and the follies of others.
We rejoice at love,
birth,
fulfilled dreams,
good harvests.
We fight wars at this table,
and we make peace at this table.
Perhaps we will end at this table,
laughing and crying,
birthing and burying,
fighting and loving
to the last luscious bite.
volume 12(6)
March 15, 2008
This poem is copyright © 2008,
Sondra Ball, all rights reserved.
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