THE OLD DESK

It has already outlasted the cat with nine lives,
and, most likely now, will outlast me as well.

I help Laurie lift it up the winding stairway
into her third-floor apartment.

Underneath the countless layers of refinishes and paint,
it’s white pine, and with the three drawers removed,
not heavy at all, since memories are not weighted
in pounds.

It was my Christmas gift in the seventh grade.
My father had Carl Martin, the parts man at Prather Auto,
by avocation a woodworker, make it for me.

Not long after that Carl saved the Prather building,
and maybe several lives, by grabbing a flaming oil pan
in his bare hands and carrying it into the street,
receiving for his bravery a thank you from the owners
and a $200 hospital bill.

Later Carl was my warrant officer in the National Guard,
and we helped defend James Meredith at Ole Miss.

I used it through high school, left it at my parents’ house
during college, loaned it to my brother-in-law for two years,
reclaimed it for graduate school, using it as a typewriter stand
for the old Royal that Kaye’s dad had acquired for her college use
by trading a heifer calf.

She and I both sat at the desk and used the typewriter
to prepare our graduate school papers.

In Missouri over the last forty years it has been our desk,
our son’s desk, Kaye’s sewing table, a computer desk,
and now our daughter’s desk.

In its various avatars it has been shellacked, stained mahogany,
painted green and then white.

Laurie eyes it curiously, already planning its next color,
but she’d better know if she ever offers it in a garage sale,

I’ll disinherit her.

- Bobby Hamblin