ManicDDaily

The Bits 

When I have nothing
with which to make
a poem, 

I think of my grandmother, who,
after laying out the pie dough in the pan,
 the fruit, the lattice interlace—in my gloom, the laying out of that limp dough
feels almost like flesh—but it was not
like that at all—the gloom is not in the memory
but in my current
self—

the point is that after my grandmother composed
the pie, there would be the extras–
the snips of dough she’d cut
from the pie’s perimeter, and all those lopped corners left
on the floured waxpaper—

She would roll those in her hands
into a ball. then roll them with
the rolling pin again,
and I would take a glass and carefully press out circlets,
which we would place on a separate baking sheet, sprinkling
with sugar, and those little round cookies
would be more delicious (at least to my childish taste)
than the whole darn pie— 

As you grow old, you sometimes feel that you yourself
are all those bits, your limbs as akimbo as angled dough,
your mind, your life, a bunch of edges that are bridged
by extensive byways, strips of tenuous connection that narrow
and grow wide—this that led to that, that led to that
that led to this and this and this now—

I think of how my grandmother imbued it all
with sweetness, shape—
how one might do that—

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Another rather drafty poem for April. Pic and poem mine; all rights reserved.

I wish a happy Passover and blessed Good Friday and just a good day to you all. Stay well, and thanks. And if you get a moment, do check out my new book of stories. “Who Are You Kidding? and Other Stories of Strange Change.”