Around My Table

"The world begins at a kitchen table."

Joy Harjo, from Perhaps the World Ends Here

While Tropical Storm Isaias raged like a lion last week on Long Island, we spent four days huddled around our kitchen table grateful for hurdling another dark stormy event in our lives. The darkness and sweltering heat surrounding those days left my family and friends breathless, isolated, and far away from reality as we functioned without power, electricity, hot water, and the internet. Little did we know of life outside our neighborhood that was strewn with heavy branches fallen from massive trees. It was the kitchen table that brought us together with electric candles as we talked and began the cleaning-out-the-freezer process. 

I think back on all the years the table served as a hub for family life and am grateful to have found Joy Harjo's poem to ponder. It became a catalyst for me to write using her line, "The world begins at a kitchen table," as a prompt. Her poem is full of the beauty of kitchen life. At the end of October, my family will leave our Long Island home of thirty-eight years for a second chapter of family life. My table memories will fill my life with joy.

We start each day in our hub, the

kitchen, with a revolving world

of conversation. Life begins

with a daily gathering at

dawn where a  

litany of thoughts flow from the kitchen.

Evenings sing of gratitude around our sturdy table,

washed with years of joyful and sorrowful tears.

©CVarsalona, 2020, Long Island

I missed Poetry Friday last week due to the storm but am happy to backtrack and connect with my writing friends. Connections are important in this world during quarantine life because they keep spirits high. Thank you to my poet friend Laura Purdie Salas who was last week's host. She has an original poem and a wonderful, information graphic on "Why aren't you writing a poem?" Although I am late to join the roundup, I feel that this poem needed to be written and sent out.

A new kitchen waits for me here in Virginia.