A Dead Language
Her kitchen swells with the aroma
of garlic simmering in olive oil.
Humming to herself, my mother
slices mushrooms into tiny trees--
like perfect cutouts
from slabs of white marble.
She is making the tomato sauce
learned from her eldest sister--
interpreter for the other ten
because their mother did not speak English.
When I ask why all the children
didn't learn two languages, my mother laughs:
“It would have put the teachers to shame!”
She wishes now she could have learned Italian,
those melodious secrets shared only
by mother, father, and sister.
I also feel cheated. I learn to make the sauce
but without the stories of seasoned women,
without the wisdom of many grandmothers.
I am like these hot-house tomatoes,
without juice or sweetness,
born from sterile soil and shallow roots.
Today I long to know the names
of sausages and cheeses tumbling on my tongue,
of ancestors who cut marble and planted olives
near some village east of Rome.
My mother's name sounds like an Italian love song--
Lumena Amoroso, but she was only known as “Lou.”
Hers was a song quelled by silence,
and none of her children will ever know the words.
(reprinted with thanks from Seedhouse)
