Saint Anthony of Padua
converted privilege
to patronage of the poor
my mother’s best friend
********************
Sant’Antonio di Padova
privilegio convertito
al patrocinio dei poveri
migliore amica di mamma
Mother
All posts tagged Mother
White Camellia
Photo from flower-tops.blogspot.com
mama prized these blossoms
favored the purest of white
floating fragrant in waterbowls
welcoming guests to her
humblest of dining room tables
evoking exotic mystiques
of her girlish adorations
Greta Garbo and Verdi’s
Dumas inspired La Traviata
all figured so prominently
between leaves of the delicate
scrapbook she kept eighty years
Photo from
artisansofleisure.com
kitchen aromas
mama in her element
oh what I would give
Illustration from The Catholic Catalogue
(An older poem reposted here for Mother’s Day)
(Translation – Forever in My Heart)
my mother’s two hands
their name was Aida
for ninety-three years
till they died within mine
Neapolitan amber
kissed by the warmth
of ancestral gold suns
took on in their time
a tawny translucence
too-prominent veined
their rosaried
pianist fingers
misshapen
arthritic
two nicotined pads
in one comfortable
cigarette cleft
their butcher-strong grip
ably tended her
bed-ridden
twice-her-size husband
for sixty-three years
not to mention
their nursing
of parents and siblings
while raising three
boisterous
urbanized children
they made magic
of wooden-spooned sauces
and rolling-pinned pasta
some seventy-thousand
made-from-scratch meals
her affectionate gifts
from the recipes
cherished as prayers
in her heart
they used hair-nested
ear-rested pencils
to cipher their sales
to grocery customers
drawn upon
brown paper bags
so much faster and neater
than any old new-fangled
black and bronze
adding machine
they were peasant hands
born to bear
uncomplained pain
so toughened by toil
roughened by rustic
impatience
to get the job
any job
every job
done
yet tender as tulips
when drawn across
trouble-knit brows
of illness or grief
when stroking teared cheeks
of sadness or woe
I loved those two hands
even more than I know
how with every touch
they so dearly loved me
Poesy plus Polemics 