CLUTTER ON THE TABLE

Coffee rings overlapping one atop the other

marking the table which carefully held mugs

that flowered hearts once flowed into.

The many great plans and pains

those rings retained as they worked

their way deeper into the wooden grain

of that polished sawn flat yet well-worn plain.

The lives of couples plans for days ahead

as they spoke of love one to the other.

The many napkin mapped ideas

of many a positive merry businessman

using everything from cartridge

to counter borrowed ball point pens.

All the great groups of plans

to find a way to grow rich enough

to comfortably retire with money enough put away

long before the infirm time of riding

to days of their getting too old, bald and gray

as earners providing for families at their side.

More than plans passed those coffee stain rings

had been traded over that worn lacquered wooden surface

that if only it could talk about the great many days

with its plenty happy sad story; what a song it could sing.

The tales of love and hate, wars, death and fate;

the off color comments few condemned as cold,

because they were inside jokes that laid more than few

in laughter prostrate as they gathered as friends.

over a tabletop that grew new to old toward its own end.

As time passed without the table

having anything to ask or say

about holding many a friendly game

where pals squared off to play

using the well-worn with some corners torn

deck of cards honestly dealing

 (except in euchre

where it’s only cheating

if you get caught deal stealing.)

The many teenage dramas seen

that in the end their meaning

meant little more than nothing.

But at the time were so terror fraught

that the young were certain life was ending.

They too laughed and cried real heartbroken tears,

their fears just as real as the spent older couples

who shared scalding hot cups of joe there

who knew that time was stealing from them

the hard earned fair share, that as they aged

and broke down as government was taking from them

all they worked for, all they struggled to save.

.

Yes if that old table, varnish cracked and mellowed

with its multiple permanent coffee mug ring stains

could talk the many stories it could tell all 

the sat down at people stories ghostly remains

of everything it had earned and knowledge learned.

But no one paid it any mind

as it gathered the dust from lives collected

from the passing history of time

and no one who noticed  or complained

when that thing was broken apart and discarded.

As it was replaced without regard

by an easier to clean Ikea plastic slick topped

piece of furniture which with every wipe

the history that had just happened there

marked in stains was simply with a wet cloth

wiped away and rinsed down the drain.

© M Durfee

5/8/13