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Making Potica Courtesy of Tina Pomeroy ---for Leonpoldina, Johana and me
We watch Gramma
as she takes off her ring,
sets it on the windowsill
next to her birthday fern.
The bread swell of her belly
tucked under an apron,
she rolls up her sleeves,
arms showing round and white
like the dough she begins to knead
between her fingers.
Against the table
she slaps and smacks the dough,
folds it in on itself
again and again.
Flour rises in storms,
clouds around her face.
Her body knows the rhythm
of this bread
as the peach trees of Rijeka
know the seasons.
Gramma rolls the dough thin,
ladles out the thick swell
of cellar honey, spreads it smooth
She sows the nuts like seeds,
sprinkles on the sweet rayene
dried from the grapes
Whose vines tangle across the back porch.
"Yez patee
Ba gzita Nomaraila." (You and me and a silken umbrella.)
she sings and winks to us.
But we don't understand
those words she couldn't leave
in Belgrade.
We only know the song of the dough,
the music she makes with her hands.
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