Picnic Table

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

Groundhog: photo from Wikimedia Commons