Coming to Table
Sunday, laying the mats for supper,
I regret the nicks and water rings
from years of use. The bang of
baby spoons and pasta pots.
The gold, afternoon light has
warmed the cherry wood.
The sultry heat of autumn
has stilled the house,
and I am taken back
to my first time at this table.
A nervous, stiff dinner on a
sticky night in her dining room
during the early, tentative days.
Muffled kitchen noise, composed
plates brought out one by one.
And I imagine how impossible
it would have seemed then—
That this table would come to me.
That I would raise two sons at it.
That I would come to love so deeply the woman
who was placing a plate in front of me,
reminding me I was a guest.
A quarter century of meals and
I remember this, as she leans on
my son’s arm, coming,
coming to table.
Laura Schulkind, an attorney by day, is entrusted with others’ stories. Through poetry she tells her own. She has two chapbooks with Finishing Line Press: Long Arc of Grief (2019) and Lost in Tall Grass (2014). Her work also appears in numerous journals and on her website, www.lauraschulkind.com.