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In the beginning is the word,
 word
begets word
and a poem quickens in my head
when I think of bread.
A shop window I pass daily
brims
with bread:
a flood of loaves to feed a few.
Five once fed a multitude.
My family eats five and more a week.
I work no miracles but simply work:
words
are my work
and daily I taste their bread
savouring texture and sound to glean
centuries of meaning from the grain.
The wisdom of worlds lived and gone
lives on
in words.
Who touches the pulse in the heart
of the grain shares a perpetual feast
and bread eaten becomes bread given.
I crave my daily bread becomes
a poem
in my head
and lives to quicken other hearts
to life — even one would be enough.
Striving for each day’s bread I hunger
for the whole slice, the full loaf,
not for
bread alone
and not from greed: I taste it once
and want no more, no less, than to celebrate
each day the bread all families eat. |
