The table’s there in the kitchen, where I kneel
on a high chair, tongue at air, trawling a slate
with pot-hooks; on the track of words; on the track of this word,
table. Is there instant, wobbly wooden,
four-square in it solid self, and does not need
my presence to underwrite its own or scrawl,
thick tongue, thick hand, a puddle slate and knock it
up out of blue nowhere. Where are they, table,
slate, slate-pencil, kitchen, and that solid
intent child on one knee reaching for sawn
planks back there? Breathless today, or almost,
I wrestle uphill to where, in a forest gap
of table size, it stands, four legged, dumb,
still waiting. An unbreathed word among the chirrup
and chafe, it taps a foreleg. Table, I mutter.
With tool-marks fresh as tongue-licks, already criss-crossed
with scars I feel my own where hard use makes them,
it moves as that child’s hand moves about muddy water.