Hands Kneading Bread

Hands Kneading Bread: An Image: A Story

On the firm, even folds, the fine folds,
the rough ridges and escarpments
of her hands, square and stubby, the fingers,
collapsed around one joint, pressing down
and sinking in the dough that springs
to meet them. The skin, loose,
gloves of unbleached linen, caked and wrinkled.
How Titian would love these hands
who loved texture so much, satin and brocade,
velvet and muslin, his naked babies
like lumps of dough stuffed in suits of skin
as imperfectly filled as their lives,
the hands of a nun who spent twenty years
making bread for the school cafeteria
after a life of teaching, her skin,
taut and full-to-bursting once, crinkled,
loosening its hold, worn like her body
a garment she'll gladly take off
when the time comes. She tells of her youth
on a farm in Cumberland county, how tender
and new everything was in spring,
how even the old sycamore was smooth
as a baby's cheek under the scaly bark.

After a photograph by John Beal, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
[Appeared in THE CRITIC]

The Bricklayers

repaving the street near my house
talk Italian as they work,
a southern dialect.
They're Abbruzzesi
descendants of an ancient people
who made roads and aqueducts
for the Romans, and paths
that others would follow.
I was a stone mason back home,
the boss tells me, and I know
that like my mother¹s father,
he built houses for a living.
He gives orders in Italian
and a young man answers in English.
They're fathers and sons,
in-laws and paesani.
In the space they've opened between the curbs
they measure carefully
from the middle to the edge,
from the edge to the middle,
matching new bricks with the old,
blending the colors to look good.

[Appeared in VOICES IN ITALIAN AMERICANA]

Copyright, Rina Ferrarelli.
All Rights Reserved. Printed By Permission.