From Scratch
What was it when we baked bread together from scratch?
I haven’t tried for forty years although I miss the taste
dissolving on the tongue with a palate’s kiss,
the aroma lingering through decades and tempting
regret, the warmth of crust fresh from the oven and, before
baking, the satiny skin needing to be punched
down and kneaded again and again to rebound
to a shape more ample. Food of simple ingredients –
flour sugar shortening salt – and the smooth cake of yeast
that keeps secret the magic of rising and resilience.
Or was I so in love with you that love infused
an unbearable ferment to our making and sharing?
We pounded the dough, inflamed the pilot
of the old stove, panned the batter and slid it in.
Our naked hands pulled out, tore into the loaf,
ripped off chunks, you and I too impatient
for surgical slicing, the soft corpus separating
as if anticipating. We smeared butter and honey
on both sides, thick with abandon, stuffed each other’s
mouths, sucked sticky fingers, unconcerned about saving
for the next day, let alone for a far season, confident
we could recreate the flavor, grist of our cosseted embrace.
Lately what I smell, what I taste, what I see slips away,
lost in a steam of nostalgia. I have some time left
but not faith the bread will rise again, turn out the same.
How to resuscitate a recipe for a tender rendering
Raised to the lips. An offering. Bread, what was then.
.
Soliloquy Upon Finally Seeing King Lear in My Seventieth Year
Except for Dover, the action could take place anywhere,
any kingdom craved by greedy progeny.
Two daughters covet a demented father’s riches—what I hear
of King Lear, first Shakespeare play assigned freshman year.
But I waste no time reading about an old king addled by infirmity.
I’m busy hanging out all night in the student lounge,
learning to smoke and debate Plato, Descartes, Nietzsche
(having studied none of them) with daring young men
who freely share their knowledge of illegal substances and Jung’s
symbolism, and I assert my fantasy of feminism before taking off
with one of them, my parents in hysterics. Now I’m captured inside
Act One, mesmerized by Cordelia. She asserts her independence,
refusing to flatter an overbearing father. Where’s her mother
in all this bother? Away to Dover? Mine’s been dead ten years.
Her mind addled much longer. She inhabits a farther shore and argues
with dead sisters. I couldn’t carry her back from the brink of Dover.
Goneril and Regan reenact my sons’ rivalry. Or are David and Jonathan
miming the girls, refusing to play nice or become Biblical best friends.
Is there a heavenly kingdom anyway? Perhaps if I’d seen Lear eons ago
I could have predicted the inevitable giving up and letting go.
Cordelia—derived from Latin for heart. Is this a love story? Or a power play?
Commentators compare aged political figures to Lear – morally blind –
who cling to power as I cling to life before departing for Dover. Flatter
the fool. Somebody, please, anybody, tell me you truly love me.
© Ellen Sazzman
Ellen Sazzman is a Pushcart-nominated poet recently published in Clackamas Review, Slipstream, Atlanta Review, Peregrine, Delmarva Review, Sow’s Ear, and Common Ground, among others. Her collection The Shomer was a finalist for the Blue Lynx Prize and a semifinalist for the Elixir Antivenom Award and the Codhill Press Award. She was awarded first place in the Dancing Poetry Festival, received an honorable mention in the Ginsberg poetry contest, and was shortlisted for the O’Donoghue Prize.
The Loch Raven Review 