Nonno Finaldi

 I.

I name cigarette burn constellations on Formica:
Gargoyle and Sea-lion.
He sits behind them puffing.

Watermelon my word for his belly. At home,
only a deigo tee covers it; the belt always to the right,
buckled up over his equator.

He grumbles greetings, calls my little sister Pesty;
his broken English even trickier to decipher
without dentures.

After backyard garden tours:
snapping green beans,
checking ready cucumbers,
before the feast:
homemade noodles,
meat sauce
and self-cased sausages,
he takes me to the pail of rocks under the stairs,
letting me in on a secret.

I pick up metamorphic, heavy ones,
caressing stability; in the sedimentary
he said find fossile . The calm Nonno
hides there, one who doesn’t yell until his face turns red,
veins bulging on forehead and neck.

II.

One night, as passengers on a holiday ride, I reach over
to hold his hand of big bones and warmth,
watching my breath mix with December air,
ignoring grumbling lungs fighting emphysema.

A week later Nonno is gone, moments
after ripping out hospital IVs to smoke air-cigarettes,
curse nurses.

Cleaning out his basement in spring,
we sell treasures for dimes and quarters
to neighbors and strangers;
I guard our rocks.
My sister doesn’t keep a thing, dismisses the value
of worldly goods.
I hoard them because we inhabit all that we've touched.