Drop Leaf Table
Eleanor Kedney

Drop Leaf Table

We bought it from a second-hand shop—
top marred, a loose hinge, scuffed legs,
oak stained honey brown and lacquered
to shine, a deep grain like old rivers
that long ago carved their way into clay
how a path lays down in the woods,
meandering and steady.
Its sides down, the plank in the middle
is a footbridge, though what crosses
are hands and conversation where we meet
leafless under a new sky,
offering fresh figs to each other. Open,
it’s oval, more the shape of a man-made lake
than the moon that redefines its shape:
full, crescent, waning as if to make us pine
to be different, while a lake’s edge seeps
into the earth quietly but collects and gets deeper
where it’s contained, moving always from the center
of itself.

Eleanor Kedney

is the author of the chapbook The Offering (Liquid Light Press, 2016). Her poems have appeared in a number of U.S. and international journals and anthologies. She founded the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio and served as the director and the master class teacher. Her website is EleanorKedney.com.