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The Table is Bare

Colleen Lillian Martin, Ivy Martin and Joyce Elwell - All passed

The old wooden table stood
With bench seats ripe for splinters
Well worn by bottoms aplenty
And wobbling precariously after years of wear

The table-top was scored through decades of use
Innumerable meals prepared and consumed by starving bellies
What tales this table could tell
Of conversations overheard

The generations paraded
Aunt, Uncle, Sister, Brother
Scores of gene-connected individuals
Gathering around this table for fun, food and frolicking

As I look at the old worn table
My heart is touched by gray
For the table now lies bare
When previously it was hard to find a place to lay your elbows

Three seats that were so significant
All vacated in one year
And I am left to wonder
Why, at seventeen, I refused to come home for Christmas

The matriarchal chord thrice broken
They were the stitches in our family seam
And no one stepped up to fill the gaping hole they left
We now face the table bare and its barren state mocks us all

Learn more about this author, Hayley Solich.
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