The Table from Issue 49
Here is the phantom solace of a table,
shimmer of candle light in every glass,
at every place an incandescent hovering
out of nowhere of somebody’s face,
amnesia of the iron dark receding
bit by bit as feature after feature
shapes all around your brief fluorescence
of recognition, flickering on and off
and for a moment you are niece again
in those eyes, friend in those, acquaintance, cousin
grand daughter, great grand daughter, on and on
the faces dimmer as they stretch away
into irrelevance along the table,
each one your emissary now, the closest,
the most remote, all burnishing the dark
to different shades of this familial dream,
this dream of mine, what I have left to give you:
Now you can sit among them, unafraid,
not minding even as the obsolete
distinctions they’ve put on the welcome you
begin dissolving and you lift the glass
They lift, and drink wine they drink, and see
our lips now anybody’s lips reflected
in the wine you lower as they lower it.