A LONG VIEW
1911 opens like a ship’s manifest to an aspiring dream.
My maternal grandparents, emigrants from Pisciotta,
Provincia di Salerno, Campania, Italia-
following in the wake of their one-time village paesani,
set sail for Amsterdam, New York.
Steady wages for backbreaking work carry the promise,
a better life for the Future.
And so, the inheritance of ancestors
transplants into New World soil.
A humble house, 258 West Main Street,
The front room reborn, now a stanza mercante
where women’s work serves, bushel baskets
brimming: escarole, eggplant, beans, tomatoes,
braids of garlic, bouquets of dried herbs.
Pride-polished front window displays,
front door opens out onto cracked concrete
sidewalk, people pass, cars idle,
busy street and busy-body neighbors.
Around the back of the house
where the land slopes,
we see a storied world-
the family rooms, a second floor up. There,
from the back porch the clothesline stretches
out over grandma’s kitchen garden: dense
red clusters of San Marzanos cling
to a rough-hewn trellis; scented rows
of parsley, basil, oregano, in abundance
gladiolas in red, pink, white, purple, blue.
On the ground level a full door with gritty glass
opens out over an apron of cracked concrete.
Where a weathered wooden table and three chairs wait.
Inside, grandpa’s tidy cellar. Sniff! An earthy mix:
dust motes mingle cool stone, sweet cigar smoke, light
musk. Drying on burlap covered benches borlotti beans,
scattered speckles and splashes of red, purple, tan.
Against the backwall four demijohns cradled in wicker
hold court on a platform of salvaged wood.
Aging in green glass bellies, home-made red wine.
Over time, it’s sharp fruity tang softens and stirs
memories of hardship and the love left behind.
And the land slopes
to where a crick has deepened into a trench.
Buried in a child’s memory, the dead rat interred below.
Two wooden planks weighty and worn bridge over,
to a raised bed engineered in rough-cut gravel,
the great expanse of the New York Central Railroad.
Two tracks heading east to Boston,
Two heading west to Chicago, long
freight lines blasting by, day in and day out.
Crossing over those soot-stained stones,
the stink of diesel bitters on grandpa’s tongue.
Down the sloping hill, his farmland awaits his
return from The Mohawk Carpet Mill’s steady
earsplitting days of slamming metal machines.
Still, the land slopes to the wide Mohawk River
coursing downstream where the waste
from mills is flushed away.
This is the world view
from the small yellow kitchen,
where between the stove and the table
lives the heartbeat.
In a corner the glove sewing machine nags
to be fed piecework of leather glove blanks
Everyone pitches in!
Born and raised here,
my mother Margaret, Immacolata,
one of 7 sisters, 3 miscarriages, 2 brothers.
Over the years, everyone exits
though the front door, photographed
in wedding attire of 1930s, 40s and 50s.
No photo of Fanny, Fortunata, leaving
in the black habit and grey veil
of the Convent of Little Sisters of the Poor.
Like a ship’s manifest, gli spiriti perduti:
this pain of separation drives desire
for connection.
Mary Constance DeRocco is a second generation Southern Italian American born in Gloversville, New York. Artistically inspired by the women from whom she has descended. Living forty-five inspired years, full time in Provincetown, MA. She is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a published poet and writing a fictional memoir.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 