Imagining Grandparents

Charlie Brice, on Facebook, posts that "To learn about narrative, about imagery, about injecting all the senses into a poem, and to learn about generosity and love of family, I always turn to the poems of Maria Mazziotti Gillan." He selected this poem as an example.

I Dream of my Grandmother and Great-Grandmother

I imagine them walking down rocky paths

toward me, strong, Italian women returning

at dusk from fields where they worked all day

on farms built like steps up the sides

of steep mountains, graceful women carrying water

in terra cotta jugs on their heads.

What I know of these women, whom I never met,

I know from my mother, a few pictures

of my grandmother, standing at the doorway

of the fieldstone house in Santo Mauro,

the stories my mother told of them,

but I know them most of all from watching

my mother, her strong arms lifting sheets

out of the cold water in the wringer washer,

or from the way she stepped back,

wiping her hands on her homemade floursack apron,

and admired her jars of canned peaches

that glowed like amber in the dim cellar light.

I see those women in my mother

as she worked, grinning and happy,

in her garden that spilled its bounty into her arms.

She gave away baskets of peppers,

lettuce, eggplant, gave away bowls of pasts,

meatballs, zeppoli, loaves of homemade bread.

"It was a miracle," she said.

"The more I gave away, the more I had to give."

Now I see her in my daughter,

the same unending energy,

that quick mind,

that hand, open and extended to the world.

When I watch my daughter clean the kitchen counter,

watch her turn, laughing,

I remember my mother as she lay dying,

how she said of my daughter, "that Jennifer,

she's all the treasure you'll ever need."

I turn now, as my daughter turns,

and see my mother walking toward us

down crooked mountain paths,

behind her, all those women

dressed in black.

by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

Click here for  the Italian translation of this poem

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan's newest poetry collection is When the Stars Were Still Visible (2021). Other recent publications are the poetry and photography collection, Paterson Light and Shadow, and the poetry collections What Blooms in Winter and The Girls in the Chartreuse Jackets, a pairing of her poems with her paintings.
Maria's artist website is MariaMazziottiGillan.com and her poetry website is MariaGillan.com.