Monday, February 13, 2017

Baking Bread (or Life in The Modern World)


photo via unsplash


Baking Bread (or Life in The Modern World)

Why can't it be easy for once?
Instead, it starts off sticky
and keeps getting stickier
until necessary intervention.

Slow down.
Slower,
less speed,
deep breaths.

Suddenly, stickier becomes smoother
and by now you should know better --
difficult hides behind a screen of pliable
and soft is a precursor to crunchy.

Next comes growth.
A time of pure yeasty optimism
until the smashing and scraping
brings everything back into perspective

and before you know it
the boundaries are set
the heat is applied
the outcome revealed.

There is no such thing as easy,
only repetition after repetition.
Savor the warmth, the freshness.
Then start again.


©Mary Lee Hahn, 2017





This is a poem for Laura Shovan's Annual February Writing Project. The words/phrases for this poem

screen
shoot
stickier
soft
smashing
scraping
speed
smoother
slower
sticky

originated here.


2 comments:

  1. I love this metaphor! Wow! I love how the second stanza changes the speed of the poem. And the yeasty optimism. And then dang, those last two lines. Some big truth here!

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  2. I agree with Carol about the optimism, the doggedness, or, maybe what seems to me to be a belief in the ritual of repetition as an end in itself. These are important words for me to remember.

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