Patrick Carrington

Grandma’s Vines

Rockin’, snappin’ beans.

The wisdom and industry

of crooked fingers, humming

to symphonies of silver vibration

as they plunk the pan, touching

and birthing her husband’s

harvest with love. Digits

gnarled and knotted like mature

Italian grapevines, purple veins

are the juice of time and precision

flowing from her spouts and their

knobbed knuckles, skin shaded

by Tuscan plums and wrinkled

with its figs. The splintered wood

of hands peeling in strings

of bark where years of grapes

have stolen moisture does not

make her rub across my cheek

and forehead less tender

or smooth than it was for my

father as she tucked him into bed

when her wine was young.