Selected Poems
Nonna
Nonna's home was in the middle of the block,
just off the avenue. On June Friday afternoons,
my friend and I arrived, after walking from school.
We ran up the stoop along the wrap around porch
followed the Ferrari rut on a worn wooden floor.
Out to the back yard, where Nonna would be waiting
with iced tea and frosted biscotti for her grandchildren.
seated in the pergola, with the hand warmed, smooth pillars
We would stroll down the walk in her envelope garden
opened at both ends and facing the boulevard.
The center, a flawless field of grass, worthy of football.
We would weed and she would tell us which vegetables
to clip off the vine for tonight's supper's ensalada.
We would gather again and return to the kitchen
to make sauce and antipasto for parents who arrived after work
with chianti, and canzoni popolari begun to be sung.
These shenanigans and falderal were quite moving,
to this quiet 10 year-old young Irish kid.
“Mr. Robert come with me, you are MY grandson now.” Nonna said.
My third grandmother, Frieda Rossi, had ‘adopted” me the first moment we met.
My best friend had just brought me to his grandma's.
but the rest is storia familiar.