Nonno
meticulous tools hanging on pegboard
nonno you were your workshop to me
the one with the two-part door you could
lock it on the bottom and unlock it
on the top and how we all as children
loved that hinged door I especially
loved the door and the varnish smell
the turpentine the cacophony of paint
and metal and wood the wood you kept
under the long grey clean table scraps
of wood some of them harder than your
smile and some of them softer than your
laugh when you took all those pictures
of five year-old me pictures of me with
my hair pulled into an eye-throbbing bun
in my whitest dress on the backyard grass
that always shone so green even no maybe
especially on cloudy days and you started
a clay bust of me your youngest granddaughter
your youngest daughter’s only child the clay
sweat in August and your whole workshop
smelled cloyed of it and wood and turpentine
and the neat rows of boxes holding plastic
cars for your models and even the sponges all
green colours but never as green as the lawn
and all the pink people all of them pink and
hard like the pink of your finger right by
the rosary that mama made me kiss while she
stared and cried oh she yelled at me how
could you spill spaghetti on your dress at
your nonno’s wake and I asked why you didn’t
wake up if it was called a wake that made
mama laugh and cry at the same time and that
scared me more than kissing your rosary more
than how much she loved you nonno
nonno of the workshop nonno of the dollhouse
you made even the furniture by hand and the
lampposts at the door all black and yellow
were salt and pepper shakers with real salt
and real pepper inside why did you do that I
always wondered and I never got to ask because
by the time I spilled salt all over the cold
floor of my bedroom you were gone
© 1997 by Halsted M. Bernard