On the Christmaswhite plains of the floured and flowering kitchen table The holy loaves of the bread are slowly being born: Rising like low hills in the steepled pastures of light -- Lifting the prairie farmhouse afternoon on their arching backs. It must be Friday, the bread tells us as it climbs Out of itself like a poor man climbing up on a cross Toward transfiguration. And it is a Mystery, surely, If we think that this bread rises only out of the enigma That leavens the Apocalypse of yeast, or ascends on the beards and beads Of a rosary and priesthood of barley those Friday heavens Lofting . . . But we who will eat the bread when we come in Out of the cold and dark know it is a deeper mystery That brings the bread to rise: it is the love and faith Of large and lonely women, moving like floury clouds In farmhouse kitchens, that rounds the loaves and the lives Of those around them . . . just as we know it is hunger -- Our own and others' -- that gives all salt and savor to bread. But that is a workaday story and this is the end of the week. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BLOSSOM, FR. SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE DOROTHY'S DOWER by PHOEBE CARY ARABIA by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE TO THE LADY IN THE CHIMSETTE WITH BLACK BUTTONS by NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS THE RAZOR-SELLER by JOHN WOLCOTT EMPTYING ASHES by MAXWELL ANDERSON AMBITION by MILDRED TELFORD BARNWELL LEMNISCUS AD COLUMNAM S. SIMEONIS STYLITAE APPENSUS by JOSEPH BEAUMONT PSALMS 71. PRAYER AND SONG OF THE AGED CHRISTIAN by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |