At the Table

by Julene Tripp Weaver

A son who listens to his mother

sits quiet at her kitchen table

in the dark, in silence, with a cup of tea.

He listens to her day talk

the minutia of a housewife.

She is surrounded by sons,

a husband.

A mother who gives her life away

talks to this son about nothing.

This one son sits still, listens,

the night air hushed around them

the dishes put away

the chores done

the other men of the house asleep

or off in the world gambling.

A son who listens to his mother

asks nothing when her tears come

quiet in the dark where it is safe

with this one son.

Not like the other sons, or certainly

the dad, who has no time to sit still,

not man-like to sit quiet

with the woman who spends her life

on them. Tears come quiet in the dark 

without question. 

This son a solid block 

of soft wood, he absorbs her grief.

He is unlike the other men

able to tear

able to sit quiet in the dark

with his womb, her womb united.

This son her gift to this family

this special seed, so different,

so un-man-like, that he walks with other

un-man-like men. His brothers and his father

demand he leave, knowing full well

their mother will suffer

her heart will break.

So they sit in her kitchen

one last time.

They sit until their tears drain, 

and he is able to say goodbye 

to her womb.

Take his womb elsewhere

create a new family

walk un-man-like into the world

forced to gamble, he will find his truth

leave his mother’s fate behind

pray she too may find her way.

* * * * *

Julene Tripp Weaver is a psychotherapist in Seattle; she worked in AIDS services for over 21 years. She has three poetry books, Truth Be Bold—Serenading Life & Death in the Age of AIDS (Finishing Line Press, 2017), No Father Can Save Her (Plain View Press, 2011), and Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues (Finishing Line Press, 2007). She is widely published in journals and anthologies. Her poems can be found online at: Anti-Heroin Chic, Riverbabble, River & South Review, The Seattle Review of Books, HIV Here & Now; a creative nonfiction piece is published by Yellow Chair Press, In The Words of Women International 2016 Anthology. Find more of her writing at www.julenetrippweaver.com.