Our mother baked fresh bread to the scorn of our classmates.
But we knew the secret of its taste,
of its aroma filling the house at the beginning of the afternoon,
of having to wait for the loaves to cool
while temptation pervaded the house—
seethed under doors, distilled in our noses, condensed in our throats,
dripped to our ready tongues.
“You can’t make bread; you have to buy it,”
said one boy, shaking coins of many lands in his pockets.
He would go on to taste
baguette and biscotti,
focaccia, chapatti,
pita, tortilla, and nan,
and plenty of fine wines.
And still today
he doesn’t know the feel of dough in his hands,
how it gathers itself to itself,
how it rises and falls and rises again,
how it tastes to wait for it.
This poem published by S/tick January 2016.
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