My husband tells of other days
Of hunting octopus
With a white hankie
Thrust in water
To imitate light
And if there was no hankie
A pale leg would do as well.
Boys, pushing each other,
Lanky armed, laughing
Trickery and triumph
Riches in poverty
Of great salads of lettuce
Freshly pulled with the earth still clinging.
Whole onions
Tomatoes from the vine.
Wrinkly olives black as night
Random addition of herbs
All drowning in oil
Thick, sharp, green
Riches in poverty
Of his mother's bread and pasta
Made at dawn every day
And every year a child born
And children dying every year
Two dead once
In one day
Her grief for every loss
Her love for each who stayed
Of the simple riches in great poverty.
Of laughter, food
And love.
precious
ReplyDeleteOh my, this is so beautiful and touching ♥
ReplyDeleteBellissimo! We visited sheepherders up in the mountains in the inland up from the coast of Castelsardo. They had a dirt floor but a tv ;) We camped at the water reservoir for about a week and got to know them a bit more. People like the rocks on the fields. The mother had had 8 stillbirths... suffering was etched in their faces as was their joy at being alive. Huge vessels of pasta-sciutta on the table in our honor, and then drinking wine as black as pitch - then the guitar tuned to arabian scales and the singing - Bob Dylan must have learned from them...
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