RoseMarie Crisafi - Two Poems
Tools
Aetna
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Tools
A brown-skinned Sicilian, he hammered,
Drilled, sawed; filed and chiseled. Armed
With drivers, spirit levels and a pair of calipers;
Assorted adjustable jawbones gripped and twisted.
He steered drill, router, circular and miter saws.
Heavy-handed at a lathe, he shaped lumber and metal.
Pressed against the grinder, her father bored and welded.
She remembered his tools: knuckles jutted
In knotted hemp. Hands turned into mallet fists.
With a poker, they stirred the fire;
He wrestled hoes, rakes, and shears;
He bested a long-limbed square-headed shovel.
With one swing of an axe, a young birch opened.
A short-armed spade tossed like a small girl.
Long bowed arm swung the curved single-edged blade
Of a scythe. Vines fell on grass.
She remembered his sorcery on the porch, pressed
Into pressure treated boards, striking the cranium
Of a galvanized nail.
Long, short, fat, thin, dull and shiny faces peered
From a tin until a thumb and forefinger
Picked one from crowded ranks of a metallic maze.
Skulls disappeared into lumber.
Screws turned with crossed or slotted lips.
The tanned hands could do any thing.
Her fingers flitted over a keyboard,
Plastic caps clicked. Closed, she nested
Two beige eggs; opened two hatchlings emerged.
Aetna
Ancient Aetna climbed over Sicily.
On the eastern wall, she bled to the coast,
Leaving scrub and cinders.
The cone shrunk and rose,
Splintered profile visible.
Valle de Bove, bottomless crater, gaped.
From the chasm fissures, a city fantasma,
black wisps departed.
A road from the ports, lead upwards,
Past Acireale and Nicolosi,
Into beech and brushwood.
On higher slopes, junipers crept
With scaled cones and spiny leaves,
To a wasteland and then iced peaks.
On the dust, peasants grew olives,
Tomatoes, lentils, and apricots.
Docks crowded with salt, wine, oil, tuna and pumice.
Ships sailed with sumac's red furry fruits,
Feathery leaves for tanning and dyeing.
The fissure, miles wide, bubbled.
Smoke curled from the summit.
Old women recall the eruption of 1928.
Scarfed mouths they sealed windows.
Aetna's fit, resounded on the boot.
Gas and steam collected and suspended
Over Catania, changing the weather.
Oval stoned fruits aged and died.
