Nicholas Miele takes on that most demanding of poetic forms–the sestina–to pay tribute to his Italian grandmother.
—
We went out to dinner with our grandmother– A Sestina
Columbus Park, between west and main, a trattoria,
not from the old country like Grandmother
so often spoke of. Except at table she was quiet as cork
until the grape was in her. Then she was reverent, a grape
plucked and left for years in the sun, her flesh
wrinkled and slack. Her favorite thing was the crunch
of biscotti at dessert. We’d tease—how can you crunch
when you have no teeth! No, this trattoria
was a ghost compared to the flesh
of her Tuscan hills. I imagined my Grandmother,
perhaps barefoot at dawn, plucking a grape
from an ancient vine to taste God’s work. A cork
with the Miele family name, cork
sweetly pressed into brown bottle tops, the crunch
of dusty road underfoot bottled in every grape
and passed by hand to the kitchen of each trattoria.
When she was sixteen my Grandmother
was named princess of the harvest, her ripe flesh
firm and proud like our grapes, the flesh
of our family, generations of sweet cork
preserving the fruit of our labor. Grandmother
grinned across from me, biscotti poised–Crunch!
Transported again by her smile or the sound of trattoria,
I wanted nothing more than to be a grape
under her sparkling eyes. Nico, she said, you’re my grape
as though she knew my mind. She was my flesh,
my blood. If she disliked this simple trattoria
she gave no sign but snatched up the cork
and proclaimed, this is no Miele! Crunch!
I love my Grandmother,
her life, like those of anyone’s Grandmother,
holds the joys and fears of seasons. Like a grape
she’s of the earth the way a frostcrunch
is one with winter. Ripening in bone and flesh
is hard to watch at times, except at table when her cork
is pulled free and all of us here, at this trattoria
are singing to the vines, the earth, Grandmother.
“Cork, tell me about the corks stamped Miele.” Grape
flesh by another name, she whispered, is compromise…crunch.
***
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Photo by Emily /Flickr
Emily, love the photo.