What women around a table can do

Across the table crinkling eyes flash

Silver grey in the slanting light.

Faces at the far end blend into glowing

Silhouettes dazzling blind. Voices hum

Into the night like home cooked food 

Settling the spirit, kinship sparking

Like glasses thrown into points of bright

Punctuating the table. How the late-lit

Candles undo the heaviness that cleaves

To the heart, the hand on the wrist binding

Courage even as it flies apart. 

Early summer, the horizon is a benediction 

In faint peach, and on the radio a song;

Into my arms O Lord, into my arms.