Who’s Coming To Dinner? Poem by Tom Courtney

Who’s coming to dinner tonight?
The silver and china are out
Guest that I am in this house
that used to be mine

Who’s come to travel through
the twilight of our life?
when time’s become confused
and all our affairs
rearranged according to consequences?

Who’s coming to dinner?
as the heart quickens with every breath?
The charts have all been laid
once now and for all
here where the lines of our faces
curl and curve to a melody
written and ripened in time

There is a strange party
that moves in the candlelight
that hovers in the twists of a grandmother’s hands
and whispers into the silence

A house was built
in the common manner
The walls stand dry now as foxes at the death
The hunter counts the place mats
and pulls his stallions up

Deep within the holes
of this endless aftermath
the rain cries out that it can come no more
and the hallways dematerialize
scampering away into the ground
You have a family
but you got caught not knowing

The moon alone hangs high
as a mirror for our introspection
where we speak without punctuation
simultaneously and unheard

Now surely this is a dream
sent squiggling out of time
to remind us there was a time
before our sensibilities