It sits there just beyond the hedge,

and to the left of a massive planting of perinnals.

It is an eyesore to those who possess a bias view of beauty,

and a magical kingdom to me.

Do you see, can you concieve of a more peaceful place?

There among the cedar trees sits opportunity,

my chance to escape into the world of words.

It is here that I am unimpeded in my journey to be me.

From the tiny window that opens out into the world,

I see the splender and the glory of this,

my small slice of paradise.

A place belonging only unto me.

Can you feel it, the wind that flows gently into

the valley just beyond the weathered and well worn old shed?

As I sit writting unrevealed portions of myself in the

tattered journal, the wind touches a stray wisp of hair.

The picnic table that once held long awaited Sunday

afternoon picnics of hamburgers and hotdogs

now holds only the tidings of an

unpublished and frustrated genius

The elderly woman sat quietly, her arms folded on the smooth top of the ancient oak table. The surface of the table held an parade of marks and scars, each dent and mark holding a place in her memory. The trifling half moon indentation just to the left of the bowl of mashed potatoes gave testament to a childs displeasure at his inability to force the food from plate to mouth as rapidly as with his mothers aid. Looking at the immense hands on the now grown man to her left, she smiled at the memory of the small chubby hands of the cherub who had held the silver baby spoon. A deep scortch in the center of the table, just under the hot plate that held the ham, recalled to her a candle lit dinner that had never come to pass.

The almost invisible cranberry stains on the tatting of the table runner conjured up images of Christmases past. If she listened closely with her heart she could hear the whine of her younger brother as he sat rigidly at the table, forced to eat supper before opening just one long awaited gift and then off to bed to await the arrival of St. Nick. Her beloved brother had died fifty years before on an unnamed island in the South Pacific, and yet she would know the lilt of his voice anywhere.

From her place at the head of the table, the ivory haired matriach caught sight of the old white enamel stove. The faded wall behind the stove was testament to the passing years. And yet she could see the battered stool and the small child she had been as she climbed up to watch her moma. Great clouds of steam rolled from the stainless steam pans, assulting her senses with the sugary smell of elderberry jam thickening to perfection. She could almost feel the wooden spoon in her small hand, a hand yet unmarked by the passage of time, it was not the hand before her now. The hand that she saw was lined with veins that over the years had appeared increasingly closer to the surface of her weathered skin. The shelf above the stove held an array of aged mason jars, almost worn smooth from years of use.

She pushed herself up from the table with considerable effort. The dinner this Christmas had brought with it an immence fatigue. Standing, she looked around the table at the faces of those she loved, gazing at last upon the face of the man she had loved for more than sixty years. She saw the twinkle in his eye as with a wink his gaze fell upon the mark that long ago, almost dinner had left. With a smile she turned from him, walking towards the door into the next room.

She turned and took one last look at the room that had nourished and sustained a multitude of generations. She heard again the voices of past and present progeny, saw the past and future contained in the expanse of that twelve by twenty room. There in the doorway she found peace and joy in the history contained within the four walls of the archaic kitchen. Inanimate objects that her children and grandchildren saw as an old table, or an antique stove held secrets and dreams of a lifetime of hope. Hope for the life that she had shared with them around the old table crafted by a grandfather long gone before her birth.

She walked slow but steady to the overstuffed chair that sat in the glow of the firelight. And in the moments between sleep and wakefulness, she smiled as she heard her father tell her to go to bed.

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