When is a dining table not a table?
Around the kitchen table
all the chairs are tucked in,
unused, except for the cat
resting there.
The surface is buried
under this and that:
unopened mail, remnants
of holidays past.
Now mostly a repository
for everything:
a place keeper, a war zone,
a waiting room for mail
or groceries or whatever
might be passing through.
No family gathers here
and hasn’t done for years—
the lingering fear of shared breath,
the cloud of shared trauma.
At this table no one lingers,
each cocooned in our own drama.
*
Betsy Mars is a prize-winning poet, photographer, and assistant editor at Gyroscope Review. Her poetry has been published in numerous journals and anthologies. Recent poems can be found in Minyan, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Sheila-Na-Gig, and Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. Her photos have appeared online and in print, including one which served as the Rattle Ekphrastic Challenge prompt in 2019. She has two books, Alinea, and her most recent, co-written with Alan Walowitz, In the Muddle of the Night. In addition, she also frequently collaborates with San Diego artist Judith Christensen, most recently on an installation entitled “Mapping Our Future Selves.”
a repository / for everything / a placekeeper, a war zone, …❤️
Thank you for reading and commenting, Ellen. 💞
Spot on and bittersweet. Great job.
Much appreciated, Laurie. 🙏
Powerful.
Thank you, Lori. I am grateful it “worked” for you.
I love the depth of Betsy’s poem, and how the kitchen table is a metaphor for a family set adrift with the passing of time; perhaps, due to the advent of social media, how we’ve become so insular as a society. There’s a lot of truth in the last two stanzas:
No family gathers here
and hasn’t done for years—
the lingering fear of shared breath,
the cloud of shared trauma.
At this table no one lingers,
each cocooned in our own drama.
Thank you so much – I appreciate your feelings and comments. As a closet idealist, I am hoping for a return to a slower and more truly connected life. I think we all really crave that.
I love how the poem deepens into a drop-off of realization.
Thank you for reading and noticing that. Much appreciated.
Love this poem, Betsy!
Thank you, Jennifer! That makes me happy.
the lingering fear of shared breath,
the cloud of shared trauma.
Beautiful and powerful poem, Betsy.
Thank you so much for your appreciation of it. We are all still healing while the threat lingers and new worries arise. Your kindness is an antidote.