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The book The House of the World has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and is now available on Amazon.

Bake Sale

The angularity of the woman
was softened by her cookies.
Oatmeal from the field,
apple from a summer orchard.
Cakes and tarts, buns,
the baked berries and juices
of sun and rain,
and people strolling through bushes,
small hands picking
the scent of wildness and sugar.

Blue like it never shows
in the sky,
red like a cloth of satin.
Yellow grapes, funky nuts
with the sweetness of earth,
the cornucopia of seasons,
time and fog,
hours unleashing flavors
of paradisial stews and wines.

Bakers like the angular woman,
the rotund teacher,
the boy imitating his mother
by shaping bread.
A girl with eyes of blackberry.
Tables laden with isinglass glazes,
powdered frost,
the tang of lemon chunked into ingots.
Peels of orange,
wreathes of cinnamon,
jellies from the saltcellar.

People who gathered fruit
among the leaves,
children hiding under tables,
the holiday beginning.
Art and the mitigation of love
and suffering,
celebrating the harvest of seasons.
The spice of living,
young and old
breaking bread and sharing
the recipe of life.

Published inIndex of all Poems