The neighbors who were moving brought it over,
a picnic table, almost new,
and asked if we wanted it for the back yard.
“You’re the ones with children-
and everything,” they added
with a look of longing,
some relief.
It has sat in the same place all these years,
rough from the wear of seasons,
its cedar planks once braced flat and perfect,
now like buck teeth.
My children are grown now
but the table remains, top of the slope
in the back yard.
It is a place for me to sit in silence,
away from the loneliness
of an unwritten poem.
From here I have watched ground hogs
climb the creek bank, cross the yard,
one trailing the other.
They never saw me as they nudged
June apples
littering the ground green.
I have watched leaves wander in fall wind,
brown and scampering through the garden
like new puppies.
And this winter I noticed how cold rain had dropped
into stalactites suspended from bare branches
in the cherry tree nearby.
It’s funny. Such a random gift and its impact.
We never heard from those neighbors again.
They probably don’t remember us
or the table they gave away.
But it is here that I come to consider
all manners of things.
Yesterday it was how the Peace Lily had bloomed
on the day he died
and how I had found such comfort
in this small thing.
Today I find myself out here again.
A trio of robins has lined up and shaken
late snow off the red bud
onto my solitary post.
I know now it won’t last long enough,
either the last breath of winter
or this first gasp of spring.
© Susan Muse, 2012
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| Groundhog: photo from Wikimedia Commons |
