Fred Marchant

Poet and translator, workshop teacher, and manuscript consultation

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A Place at the Table

 

It means you can face your accusers.

It means there is no place to hide.

It means you will not drift off to sleep,

or carve your name on your arm.

Or give anyone here the finger.

It means you do not have to wave your hand as if you were drowning.

It means there is nothing here that will drown you.

It means you really do not have to have the answer.

Since there are only a few of you left, sitting across from you,

it means you can study their faces as you would the clouds outside.

You will not totally forget them.

It means you are now, roughly, for a while, just about equal.

In the center before you there is nothing unless someone gives it.

It means that when you are gone, everyone feels it.

It means that when you leave, you feel as if you haven’t.

That you still have a place at the table.

Later in your life this moment will return to you as a mote

of dust that floats in on the spars of sunlight.

It will search every room until it finds you.

Fred Marchant's signature

from The Looking House
Featured on Poetry on the T, Boston, MA , August 2014

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Poems

Thoreau quote at Walden PondA Cairn by the Cabin
A Place at the Table, poem by Fred Marchant. Photo by Stefi RubinA Place at the Table
Bristlecone, poem by Fred MarchantBristlecone
library
Olive Harvest, poem by Fred MarchantOlive Harvest
On a Collage by Peter Sacks
St. John's Point, photo and poem by Fred MarchantSt. John’s Point
The Looking House, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Looking House Stanza
Migrants, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Migrants
The Peach, by Võ Quê
The Salt Stronger, poem and photo by Fred MarchantThe Salt Stronger
Fred Marchant, reading for Warrior WritersTipping Point

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