Miriam Hechtman – Long Table

Profile Hechtman OZ-NZ

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing May 2021
Special edition featuring poets from Australia & New Zealand.

Miriam Hechtman is an Australian writer, producer and poet. She is the founder and creative director of Poetica, a live poetry and music initiative and co-presenter and producer of WORDSMITH – the poetry podcast. She is also the editor and curator of The Alphabet of Women (Ginninderra Press 2021). An avid traveller, currently Miriam is based in Sydney with her husband and two daughters. www.movingtrainsproductions.com 


Long Table

Shallow soup bowls
With gold rims
Holding the broth
The life force
She at one end of the long table
Ladling out love for her kin
Her hand-sewn apron tied to her small frame
Pillowcases and sheets reused and refashioned
Her chair closest to the kitchen
A fast getaway for the breathing in
Of smoke
The breathing out of burden
He at the other end of the long table
Holding court
Counting his blessings
Guests to his right
Guests to his left
Raising his crystal glass to toast
Every bit of wonder
Every set of eyes
Every whisper of his honouring
Every nod to his survival, his arrival, his revival
And this is how they lived
Bookends
Holding the family
Together
Apart
Within and without
This long table
With its feast and its famine
Its triumph and its defeat
Its secrets and its lies
No matter
It fed them


Phone home

Invisible lines
Extra terrestrial signs
Grief bears witness here


© Miriam Hechtman