by Tanya Pilumeli

I have seen the old men
tying nets. Their hands dance like birds
while their eyes laugh and they sing
to one another in rumbling arias
and smoky scherzos.
How many more times can they be
twisted, knotted and hitched?
Each net, after healing, has a new face
until its ribs and bones are drawn
and joined into a heart.

The old women bring hot crusty bread
and coffee and sit in the salty breeze
and in the greasy curl of their gray hair,
the hump of tanned knuckles,
I feel a strange quiet
that sounds like a train on a summer night.
And I realize the nets are always dying
and always new; old strings falling,
new strings woven until time becomes
the only thing which keeps
them timeless.

Tanya Pilumeli has poetry in The Ekphrastic Review, Tipton Review, Wild Violet, The Blue Collar Review, Blaze Vox and other places. She was a winner of a Lakeland Poetry prize, NSFPS Awards, Hessler Street Fair Poetry Contest, Blue Collar Review, was nominated for a 2019 Pushcart for her essay in Café Abyss and was first-place winner for Time of Singing. She lives outside of Cleveland, Ohio, but loves travelling and has been to many amazing places including Patagonia, Colombia, Namibia and Egypt. teaches English at Lakeland Community College and owns an Italian restaurant on Lake Erie, Alessandro’s, with her husband. She has three teens, Giuseppe, Violetta and Dionisio