Sestina

Men of the church are setting up chairs
While women are preparing dishes
In the kitchen. I am arranging flowers on the table.
Music floats from the choir and the piano.
Soon the service will be over and the congregation will descend
To the basement for the after-church evening meal.

As soon as the table is prepared for the meal
Folks arrive and choose their chairs,
Dozens of hands onto biscuits descend
Before we have finished setting out glasses and dishes.
I carry the ham plattered like a piano.
The plate burns my fingers and I drop it to the table.

The clank clatter crash turns all heads at the table,
But the ham is saved. They say grace for the meal
And dig in. Their silverware plinks like an old upright piano.
Mothers serve little ones and tell them to sit straight in their chairs,
Grandmothers ask other for the recipes of dishes.
Exhausted and famished, into a chair I descend.

Deacon Michael says he hopes rain will descend
Before Tuesday, and lays his glass on the table.
Maria bemoans she'll be stuck washing dishes.
Liz tells her she'll help clean up after the meal.
The kids finish early and disappear from their chairs.
Some run upstairs to bang on the piano.

To save our ears from the noise of that piano,
The Sunday School teacher goes up to descend
On the rascals. She starts up a game of musical chairs,
While I pick up my plate and brush crumbs off the table.
The preacher, of course, is the last to finish his meal.
I start raking the scraps off of the dishes.

The ladies reclaim the leftovers of their dishes,
And their kids. The last reverberations of the piano
Die away. Silence after the meal.
I walk outside and watch the darkness descend,
See the moon glow like a lamp on a table.
One by one, the stars come to their chairs.

Firefly waiters with dishes rise and descend
to a cricket crescendo piano. The black-clothed table
Holds their meals. The stars pulse in their chairs.