My Mother's Table

by Giuseppe Farina

i kept my mothers' 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,

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.