This old desk I picked up from an antique mall
thirty years ago when I was young and flush
and had dreams of being someone — 
a mission-style library table that’s made
of oak, top grain like the swirls of silt 
the timeless river curls along the bank. 

What we’ve been through together, 
what worries impressed into that grain,
the broken drawer handle and water rings.
All the failed starts, all the bounced checks,
the polite rejections. 

All the hours staring into that eddy,
bent into an s-curve by gravity, 
aching to transcend:

I will step into that grain and float away someday,
both of us forgotten in the end.