| Rina Ferrarelli USA
The Big Snow I step into a postcard scene, white embossed on white, in the glow of lamps still on in the grey morning light, the snow trackless, dazzling as a blank page. I hesitate, attracted by the wholeness, the quiet. Gentle swells run unbroken over houses and yards, driveways, walks and street. No hedges and fences, all detail gone, like a panorama seen from the air. No borders between states, between countries, and as you gain more distance, the mountains that showed as puckers, the ropes of water disappear, and all becomes like a dream, the vanity of human wishes medieval poets and philosophers saw on the way out. What hurt to the quick, forgotten; and the red, black and grey, the glitter of mica in the rock; the fish couples dancing in the river. Buried under a huge mound the garnet shine of the car next door, and all green erased, even spruces and pines stand like white-robed monks in contemplation. Still, I hesitate, the silence beckoning, the beauty, a world united by snow. But as the cold seeps in to my feet, I wake to my breath, the blood congealing in my veins, and I push the shovel down, lift layer upon layer, feel for edge of grass and concrete, the curb dropping into the wide brick street. I find my walk and clear it to the end. (First appeared in Laurel Review)
Spring Diary 1. Cloudy. The sky the double panes. The faint yellow cast on the forsythia invisible from here. Tree branches, still bare black in the stagnant water. A robin sings holding nothing back. Got here when a foot of snow was on the ground. How musical the blackbird's whistle at mating time like a long indrawn breath the secret call of lovers under a window. Buds, red and shiny as lips on the silver maple. 2. The hills across the hollow gray-green now, the houses spaced pleasantly among trees. There is room to move without stone walls pressing on other walls, with trees. Who could live now without trees? Below the fir where we cut the brown scraggly branches last fall the Japanese magnolia from across the alley in full bloom! 3. From behind the walls a loud startling sound. Raw, harsh, constant. The cat next door wants what she can't have. She won't be diverted, bribed, cajoled. She's become hoarse voicing her need, become someone we don't recognize. 4. A small tight room, a wall-wide window. Two weeks, and the horizon has moved closer, within reach. The maple tumescent against the house. A wall of green encircles the other walls, presses against them, a penetrable wall, noisy with birds singing, nesting, the traffic intense. Masses of leaves. So many shades, so many shapes. Rising, stretching, waving, shining. Who can write a single one? (First appeared in Tar River Poetry)
Framed by Walls: Italy c.1935 The outside corners of houses the invisible distant sky. Neighbor women, all dead now, grouped on the stone street of the old quarter, before emigration scatters them, changes their clothes and customs, the sureness of their speech, before grief dulls the shine of their eyes. They pose for their men, away in countries they call America, reminding them that they’re still waiting, daughters grown and ready to be married, wives who still look good. The older sitting, bundled in layers of pleated skirts, folds of white linen on their heads--the costume they put on as they entered married life, the same for all of them-- my grandmother and her friend holding a flower. The younger, in the fashion of the time, standing in back of them, Aunt Mary who smiles a Mona Lisa smile and two of her friends, and next to her and a little to the side, my mother, in a slender velvet dress she has made herself, in slim shoes with buttons and straps, a cigarette in her mouth, about to strike a match, my mother who never smoked who lived all of her short life in the house where she was born. If she’s seventeen, it’s 1935, when a cigarette stood for something, among other things, a dare, a wish. (Appeared in 5 A.M.)
Divestiture She unpinned the folds of white linen eloquent of place, loosened the loops and braided knots, and combed her hair into a bun. She untied her apron, took off one by one the pleated skirts, the black jacket with wide velvet cuffs, the padded camisole, the long shirt articulate with lace. Then stepped into a dress skimpier than a slip, and naked, exposed like that, my grandmother came to America. (Appeared in Poetry On)
The Older Couples dancing at the Festa Italiana how tenderly they hold each other as they make their courtly rounds around the floor, humming the tunes, songs from the 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, the wooden planks and Station Square tent becoming a stately ballroom, marble and chandeliers, their motions a point counterpoint, fluent in the language of the body, you know they danced the very first time they met over fifty years ago, and there they are, doing it still. (Published in Pennsylvania English) © All Copyright, Rina
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