6 things to know about a table
It can be square––four-sturdy-legged square; square as people who think inside the box, sturdy and dogged and reliable. Useful. Not to be knocked.
Or round and pedestaled, around which can be found a flaming Christmas pudding or a flaming row, or a sympathetic lancing of a festering sorrow;
or polished and pristine and shiny, kept for the days which never come, such as the Queen (yes our dear little old queen) coming to tea, unexpectedly;
or scored and inked and pocked, by pencil and steel nib and stitch-wheel,
marking the record of poems and quilts, pondered, begun, rejected, written, sewn;
or a pirate ship, turned upside-down with a broom for a mast and a blanket sail, and a board to make your granny walk the plank into the shark-infested waters of the floor;
or slung on ropes from the roof of a pitching cabin so that the map
that shows the future can be somehow, somewhat steadily drawn.
The task for this list poem was 10 items. I decided to stop at six.