Pine

You want a table of it,
simple, solid, something you would find
in your grandmother's kitchen.
In antique shops,
we run our fingers along the wood
you don't intend to buy—oak
hard and unaffordable,
maple, like autumn you can eat on,
teak, from countries you've gone to
without me. We turn to pine.
No use looking seriously,
you're not ready to decide,
still it's good to know what you have
to choose from. Who chose this wood
to be a verb of longing?
Not of love, but of yearning that darkens
and deepens to grief. An old meaning.
I go away from you and think
table. Made from trees that hold their needles
season after season, no matter
how many years.

 

Poems by Melody Lacina: