BAKING BREAD
The smell of baking bread is my madeleine.
Memories come swirling back . . .
Of warm kitchens with oblong tables of wood
or formica made to look like wood.
Flushed, smiling faces,
white aprons like stained surplices,
arms covered with white flour, the fairy dust of magic
lands,
women’s arms pounding in rhythm,
fists punching the dough.
The good pang of hunger, the salivating,
the rumble of a strong appetite
needed to feed growing limbs.
The warmth of the oven,
the pulsing heart of it all . . .
O the oven!
The fiery belly of metal with a door like a dragon’s mouth,
the belly that gave birth to the hot brown loaves
springing from the miniature inferno,
looking like the flesh of innocent babes,
tasting of earth and spirit.
In the communal kitchen,
in the communion of the bread,
bread that fed my youthful spirit, thick and crusty,
unlike the thin wafers of the churchly sacrament
that stuck to the roof of mouth and dried it so
that I craved a sip of wine.
Bread and wine were the natural elements
of my coming of age, of my coming into life.
I knew I was alive when I bit into a thick, crusty slice of
freshly baked bread
and took a mouthful of my grandfather’s wine,
made from the grapes of Italy.
What is the alchemy that turns bread to spirit?
That transforms bread into love?
Or is it by love that the bread becomes spirit?
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