LUNCH AT A WOOD TABLE

Holiday over, you slip off the tablecloth,

revealing the wood’s own grain.

Cascading earshapes, big and small.

You say they’re inky, shifting clouds

where hermits dwell.

A line down the middle, two split halves

mirrored as riverbanks. Here and there,

knife marks where we’ve sliced,

careless what’s beneath.

Simple legs hold up a face.

Some things collapse, like the wooden chair

that yesterday capsized its guest,

yet this table never tires.

Its wood retains a certain grace.

What could it murmur?

Don’t be a numb woodpecker, you say,

don’t drink more red wine.

These tables long out of style,

the stores selling now

hard steel, slim or twisted,

doing back flips on the wall,

cold sheets of glass

that sooner or later betray.

But wood carries on,

feeds imagination,

like this misty cloud, when we’re glum

a melancholy knot, footprints of the lost

amid the world’s shifts and turns.

Your own figure of these swirls

as ears. No wonder you steam the fish

too long, the vegetables raw or overcooked,

tasting a bit like wood.

Think of lunch at a wooden table,

perhaps a poem.

I’d rather sleep,

dreaming of green forests.