The Kitchen Table © Tony Fallon 021418

The Kitchen Table © Tony Fallon 021418

The kitchen was the most import room in most Irish homes

That’s why it is mentioned so often in Irish songs and poems

They write about the hearth and the big roaring fire

And the last cup of tea at night before you would retire

How about the glass case with all the cups and plates

And letters in a rubber band from children in the States

But the most important thing to me was the kitchen table

Round which we’d sit each night to hear a story or a fable

It was made of heavy wood with real knots and grains

Made with love by my father with chisels and planes

Yong days were full of surprises but what could compare

To the day you were big enough to sit in a kitchen chair

You could now look out the window to see the cows and ass

I know I learned more at the kitchen table than I did in class

I remember the early board games like snakes and ladders

I know it was a simple game but it made us better adders

While children in America were being introduces to crafts

We were sitting at the kitchen table trying to learn drafts

When you took your finger off the man you had moved

The adults were so happy when you showed you had improved

It was around the same table that we learned twenty five

And often in our parlor we had a pre Christmas card drive

One of my mother’s famous turkey cocks would be first prize

To play your cards badly that night would be very unwise

The final round would be the highlight of that magic night

Played on the kitchen table beneath the tilly light

Beneath that same lamp I read Long John on Treasure Island

And the Scots fighting the English on the Scottish Highland

I never needed to lie in bed and count jumping sheep

I often read Grimm stories at the table until I fell asleep

We gathered there one early morning in the month of May

To hear the second heavyweight match between Liston and Clay

I remember another dark night there which I never have forgot

When I heard on the radio from the USA that Kennedy had been shot

But the days spent round that table had many days and nights of bliss

And my thoughts return with the song Memories are made of this