Baking Bread -- a Poem

Into the cream and butter,

we stir ground seeds,

cover the good and sweet

with the wane of summer's call.

And after the punch down

and let rise, we baste --

a little water, a little egg white

and salt and sesame.

We set the oven to bake.

The scent wafts us home.

Only to find a fungus trace

in our fresh bread.

Youth is like that stir,

the spin round and round

of stuck thoughts until mixed

and shaped. Old age the oven

where we have no thought,

no care, no worry of wrong

or right, and all the soft chewy

dough carefully protected

from new, from quick rise

yeast and the hurt of slice.