Poem - Table

Table

An old table from the house squats in the garden now.

The wood has split, its sunshine yellow skin blackened

by bruising rain which falls and creeps within and finds

the sinews to plump and bow and leave a drunk face

against a fence looking on, its heartwood stopped.

There it crouches as if it waits to stretch and crack itself

to another shape, like the man of the house who knows

he must do something to wrest off the hunched muscle,

compacted by a life inside; as if it would walk to the window

and clack at the pane. A messenger strewn with old dead

spring catkins, awkward as an ex-partner at the door

at pick up time, and there it can see its replacement;

sleek and brown with a camber of exotic grain,

without stain and lying on soft carpeted floor.