O you couldn’t buy this incredible night beyond tender,

wouldn’t take nothing for the glory of it

the incense, the food, the fire

remembrance squared in golden frame.

We are here to know you beyond a funeral of clutter

beyond a dessert of thieves, beyond

the oppression of earth stationed dreams ——

here is where we break bread

here is where we play cards

here is where we pound our fists

here is where we down our wine

here is where we lay out the cloth

to spread the bounty in

a house of tables

Here is where we place the centrepiece of life

the brass hued glow of our every breath

here is where we figure the time we must eat and sip

the undercurrents in our warmest conversations

here is where we repeat like the ones before us

but right here in front of us now

as we offer libation with their eyes and contours

as our countrymen seam us in death shrouds

as we bring the scissors and the bandages

the liquor and balm for our mangled backs

our roughened sores

here is where we gobble the turkey

and lay our heads down in the midnight hour

while our loved one’s sleep

in a house of tables.

Here is where we take the minutes

at the meeting place

as we draw plans to stave off darksome shadows

sheeted white

imploding in our conscious wake

like ashes of our beloved children, boiled

and hailing over hallowed congregations

via fires direct from hell

Here is the good linen I tell you to cover the water spot

as we feed the living with communal potluck,

Hoppin’ John and hog maws,

            sweet potatoes and greens,

as we oblige the mirror of ourselves in ourselves,

keepers of our secrets, colours of our flesh

as we implore our gods as to the ways of our murderers

and the whys of our own self hatred

as we shine the wood and flick ashes in trays made by little ones

in a house of tables

Here is the universal thing,

favours of anniversary, christening and homegoing,

teaching grandfather to read by lamplight

the back and forth, the generations

the way we propped up that one short leg with the encyclopaedia,

a conceit handed down from mother to daughter in

a house of tables.