The Kitchen Table

It is always a little messy.
The kitchen table.
Coffee cups and stray papers.
An odd and a couple of ends.
Never quite picked up.
Real as the conversations around it.
The memories, so many of them here
in this humble hand-hewn table top
without the atmosphere of elegance
or travel. Familiar. Almost safe.
A place to sip alone, or feast
your eyes on the woman you love
or stare into a space far beyond the space
you live in.

About this poem.

First of all, this is not my kitchen table. It’s in the worker’s quarters of the Steamboat Ticonderoga in the Shelburne Museum. It’s one of those pictures that you know have a poem in them and you just have to wait for it to find you.

Most houses center around a kitchen for some reason.

At times, we daydream in the most prosaic places.

From all that, this poem.

Tom