All three brothers wore GREAT BIG HANDS
Laborers, Upholsters, Plumbers, Truck Drivers
driving hard working hands
Their two petite sisters’ delicate long fingers dangled like ballerinas on a large stage

Now a strega lives in a tree in an Italian Cemetery
She waves her long locks, wicked fingers and restless spirit
swaying back and forth,
as she cradles Pops & Unca’s bones

Italian bones full of Sicilian marrow
revered, rattling, swaying in her wind swept embrace
her leafy limbs pray over them,
in their forever-sleeping pose

Pop’s and his youngest son, Nino, free of
heavy lugging rope burning work
precise upholstery designs stitched by
large strong hands
EMPHASIZERS of a PASSIONATE language
demanding hands shake up and down punctuating poignant points!

Hands used to delicately strum guitar chords
lift jugs of homemade red vino singing Italian songs
remembering a familia in Sicilia never to sea again

Hands, sowers of so many seeds,
Fingers pointed to a Lady in the Harbor who promised a new life
Palms lined with a destiny map that coursed from
Sicilia to Nueva Yorka to California
to a City by the Bay

NOW
a tomb in Colma
at rest with all the rest,
Papa first ~ youngest son on top
hugged in the shadow of a witchy tree
seaweed locks
waving and swaying
halo
halo