Table for Two

    This is another poem written about my grandparents.  The text is accurate, but the tone is not quite right and I can't pin down how to fix it.  But since I don't have another post quite ready, I will blog it anyway. It is a true story.


     Table for Two

When my grandparents
started their marriage in 1928
they lived in a two room homesteader's shack.
When they made their first crop
they bought a table and six chairs.
It was just the two of them,
but grandma was a good cook,
with a large family nearby
and, of course, the neighbors
would be visiting.

Thirty years later I was
one of that family
sitting around the table
sharing the food
and listening to the grown ups visit.
They had a different table by then,
but the cooking, the hospitality
was just the same.

Another thirty years later,
with our young children,
we visited them
in their rural home
later, in a bigger city
with better doctors.
Our annual visits began
in their four bedroom house,
then a three bedroom apartment
and finally, two rooms in an
assisted living facility
optimistically called "The Rainbow".

With no room for a sofa
little family nearby
very few visitors
Grandma no longer able to cook
and meals provided in the dining room,
Grandpa invited us to sit down and visit--
at the table.