A Changed Heart

The day his youngest son was born
with a hole in his heart
my grandfather made a novena.

As a child I was told the cruel history:
how he poured hot soup over my
grandmother’s head,
chained his sons in the garage to a coal stove,
made them go without food,
would not allow children to talk at the dinner table,
slapped them across the head if they did.

As an adult I faced his hilly garden,
admired the ascending rows of
peppers, garlics, tomatoes, onions, grape vines.

Pointing to a plant I did not recognize
he motioned me to a shed
where rows and rows of unfamiliar
leaves hung on string,
the aroma making them known to me.
He pulled one large leaf down,
crinkled it between his plump fingers,
deftly rolled a cigar,
lit a match;
it smelled like home to me.

We descended the cellar stairs of that
house he had built with those dangerous hands,
where his casks of wine lined the stone walls.

There was no cruelty in that hand
that passed me a glass.