Bread

Beyond the salt, beyond molasses and yeast,
the feral smell,
beyond the four corners of the house, beyond
the patch outside our front door, the furthest country
the fragrance of my loaves could claim,

into the dark dense caverns of the loaves themselves,
into the cramped temple cells where the priests
led each grain of sugar trembling and devoured it,
the consort's vaporous sigh, into all that I kneaded,
I pushed and stretched.

All the quick salt slice of that winter the loaves rose,
ascended from ash, were lords.
In our house the loaves were lords
we indulged, like babies, they were unblemished.

The loaves never started awake in the middle of the night.
They never cursed without words, but yawned
like lazy cats, unspooling their skeins of heat
into our mouths, the spongy softness of bread
like a kitten's tongue in our throats.

Into the ice-threshed night the loaves hunted,
down the long muscled alleys,
through the street's rough poundings and risings they hunted,
they found us,
they loved us,
they washed us clean.