The Blue Pine Table features metaphorical poems that spring from daily living in the real world. It also contains a few essays and a short story, "Black Clam Beach." The present world provides material aspects for the metaphors. The blue pine table is my metaphor. The story behind it is also a metaphor. It moves us beyond what is describable and comprehensible. It takes us beyond our inadequate language and the literal but never all the way. Thus the metaphor remains forever alluring and beckoning. It can give birth to a new hope of clarity within a future horizon.