i kept my mother’s kitchen table
eight chairs long, solid wood
large enough to hold a feast of plates
and all of us to sit around
sharing food and lives
she made bread upon it,
sometimes twice a week
and Sicilian sweets none of us could duplicate
even with her recipes found handwritten
in her Sicilian slanted script
if i had been born the daughter she had always yearned for
could i have learned her secrets, memorized
her hands as they mixed, kneaded and baked
Pane Siciliano rustico, artisnal, and dolci,
Taralli, cannoli,cuccidate,cassatelli,and biscotti do mandorla
that fed us and our senses all those early years
i sit at that table now, writing this,
feel her spirit, smell the flour
yeast and dough, rising, baking
into loaves of love that sustained us
their taste and scent now only in memory.