I see now how I sold myself down the river,
trading everything for just a seat at your table
or any table you might choose to gather round.
Around and around in time I descended down
and this time you won my heart and stripped me down
as in the life I remember most after the thorny crown.
This time I collapsed full beneath the strain,
sucked at last into life's deathly drain,
but even there in my despair he met me. 
He came to sit and sup with me
at some long table in the wilderness,
teaching me true meaning of forgiveness.

He made me see it all and hold it in love
with this sacred call. He showed me again the way
you sat with the twelve in this life or the other
and blustered on about me as if I wasn't there,
in the one breath saying I and the child could fend
for ourselves, didn't need anybody else, and then
in the next saying surely I was meant for more than
being sent out the door to make copies of documents,
oblivious in every breath of my true place, that I was not
just another face simply permitted or allowed to be in the room.
But it was you who sealed off the room in your heart,
pouring words on parchment but keeping love apart.

I waited forever for you and your chosen ones
to grace my table, to sit and break bread with me.
And the boy... well, the boy that waited is no more
for he saw more than I and simply could not bear to see.
I remember how excited we were to be invited
to the other home until the hostess showed me her list
and we there at number 10, she explaining that she
felt bad for inviting us before the others who
she saw as of greater importance and you —
yes, you and your crew were at the top of her list.
As before you were tops of everybody's list
and I swept away in time, not missed.

He taught me to give thanks for even this
and helped me heal the massive rift in my heart
and soul. He showed me to give thanks other tables,
for simple meals, shared sacrifice, the bounty and the blessing.
He brought me ever to thanksgiving, the love beneath the pain.
Still, last November something broke in me and I was born
and He opened the door for me to go where I could
heal my heart and find an even deeper gratitude for it all.
He led me to the mountain where I met you and I fell fast 
to my knees, where he showed me in a flash of light
I was never meant to forget you but rather to forgive me
for thinking I needed forgiveness for something so pure and true .

At Thanksgiving last year, gathered around a table with 
people from worlds away whom I had only just met, I saw
all the last completions, knowing nevertheless all the ways
you had erased your memory of me, your love, my name. 
In France, they spoke of her, how her spirit filled this land
and knew not how their land had lived in me.
And the older British chap said I was most deserving of
so great a love and for the first time in my life I agreed
and thought of course of you a world away, gathered there,
sitting in your comfortable chair, steadfastly hiding from
the heart you had forgotten or tucked up on the shelf
behind the books and notes to self to keep up all appearances.

And it has been a year and you are not here. You are
off at sea or making a life that does not include me.
Today was the day we could have had our kingdom,
the place in Greece by the sea, you and me, taking care
of the beautiful estate and all things left behind, gathering
them up with both our hearts to make another start.
Soon there will be another gathering with family
here in the land of the free. I will be there
with my evergreen heart and all these stories
that matter not to me, making more room,
preparing to welcome you home, arms open wide,
I will give thanks, and I will save your place.