In a plume-field, white above the blue,
she’s pulling up a hoard of root crops
planted in a former life and left to ripen:
soft gold carrots, beets, bright gourds.
There’s coffee in the wind, tobacco smoke
and garlic, olive oil and lemon.
Fires burn coolly through the day,
the water boils at zero heat.
It’s always almost time for Sunday dinner,
with the boys all home: dark Nello,
who became his cancer and refused to breathe;
her little Gino, who went down the mines
and whom they had to dig all week to find;
that willow, Tony, who became so thin
he blew away; then Julius and Leo,
who survived the others by their wits alone
but found no reason, after all was said,
for hanging on. They’ll take their places
in the sun today at her high table,
as the antique beams light up the plates,
the faces that have lately come to shine.