Hold your eye level with the dining table
To see how much its reclaimed pine remembers
The scars of thirty years     of dropped utensils
Bumped glasses     long-forgotten meals
And arguments     of homework going back
To junior high     the layers of equations
Running together as if part of one
Long problem worked out over your whole childhood
Mixed in with your late mother’s to-do lists
Her notes reminding you to feed the dog
Clean up your room     help out your older brother
With chemo dates     her doctor’s number     checks
Made out to hospice and the mortuary
The verses you considered for her headstone
And the black eyes of pried-out nails     suggestions
Of a past life in England     one of many
Boards taken out of an abandoned barn
The wood not young but still impressionable