My mother was not one to suffer reprimand.
Yet there were times when my father,
at his end of the table,
gently lifted a hand

to quell whatever
had her worked up
and said in Italian—
because he didn’t want my sister Marie

and me to know he’d intervened—
Lasciare stare, meaning Let it be.
A hand lifted not in ire, but instead
supplicant, palm up, open,

though forged in fire
and ore at Edgar Thomson Steel.
We were about to have supper
in the dining room on Prince Street.

From the mantel gazed
our astonished baby portraits,
bronzed booties embedded
in bronze frames.

Marie and I still played with toys.
My mother had been cooking,
sewing, scrubbing spotless over
and over the spotless house.

My father was on strike,
scrounging daily the streets
for an odd job under the table.
There was an even chance

my mother would take exception
to his lasciare stare.
But each time, he finessed it.
She adored he’d pled in Italian.

The sound of lasciare stare
is like a pastry: rich, pliant.
Marie and I heard luscious
and envisioned Moio’s eclairs.

My mother heard luscious too
and smiled omnipotently.
Wands of sun streamed through the sheers,
streaked her brown hair.

My father took a puff from his Camel
and dispatched his message
in smoky cursive, Lasciare stare,
then said it again softly,

and my mother said it too—
casting a spell over us. 
Such evenings, after we’d eaten,
anything might occur.

A drive past Highland Park Zoo:
Water buffalo and kudu
penned along the road
stared at our Plymouth

with viridescent, otherworldly eyes.
Then the Dairy Queen
on Washington Boulevard,
next to Silver Lake Drive-In,

where on the gargantuan screen
entire lives silently hatched,
and as we licked our perfect white cones,
clefs curled at the crests,

my mother—in a smart dress,
lipstick, heels, her good coat—
turned from shotgun to Marie and me,
theatrically draped an arm

across the ridge of the long front seat,
and winked.