Tablecloth
By Maria Famà
Nonna Angela speaks to me in May
She returns with May roses
She comes with May sunshine
My great-great grandmother speaks to me in May
when I cover the dining room table
with the tablecloth she wove
over one hundred years ago,
I sent a vase on the dazzling center
and a voice scented with roses
whispers into a shaft of sun.
Nonna Angela grew cotton from a seed
She spun and wove the fabric on a rickety loom
She washed and rinsed it in a mountain stream
Nonna Angela pounded the cloth on rocks
and let the hot Sicilian sun bleach
the tablecloth a gleaming white
for her daughter’s wedding day.
Nonna Angela speaks to me in May
I know her still young and twice-widowed
her sun-struck face hopeful
for five children to find a good life.
Nonna Angela embroidered with field roughened hands
tiny May flowers, pea pods and blossoms
on the tablecloth’s borders
long life and fertility, embroidered wishes,
for her oldest girl.
The tablecloth has come down to me
over a century of Mays and mothers
across an ocean
to grace my city table every Spring
Nonna Angela speaks to me in May
I answer in gratitude
For her long-ago labor of love
and of hope.