When I write about my grandmothers
something happens as I am transported
to other times and lands and languages
juiced in majestic memory, 
in a splash of the
ocean waves they traveled.

When I think I have forgotten a word,
a story, a gesture, a recipe,
it comes to me in the night as
grandmother moon transforms the
dark into gold that granddaughters treasure
in glass boxes lined with velvet.

Velvet of deepest purple, the
color of grandmother veins, the
color of ripened eggplant, the
color of budding cornflowers
in early summer
when the salt sweat drips down my face.

I taste the memory of old women
who traced their lives in migration, work,
desire, hardship and the pleasure of their
children, the dreams of their grandchildren,
tucked away
in glass boxes lined with purple velvet.