Bread

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WickedEve
WickedEve
39 Followers

...and she bartered warmth
for bread.

Her image is rawboned
in sepia, a mere stranger
here past the hour of enduring.
Though as night tapers to familiar:

     "Is the worth of your shawl but a stale loaf?
     Listen to me, Hadassah,
     I am a soft lit corner, a sack of grain.
     My arms are dying embers. There is no harm
     in being frayed and frail in them."

I would have spoken these words. Crumbs
from my hearth. I cannot sow Lodz winter,
nor reap the thaw.

Dawn comes to me,
bleak and turning pages.
Weariness scans Shoah passages
that emerge on the horizon of my hand.

I pause.

And in the abundance of my life,
I write this meager bread,
hardly a bellyful to ache any heart.

-
copyright d. dixon
2/19/05
-

WickedEve
WickedEve
39 Followers
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  • COMMENTS
3 Comments
lorencinolorencinoover 15 years ago
a sadly human beauty

<br>

Bow, respectful of this poet,<br>

you who wander here in idle curiosity,<br>

for she strokes a coloured splash<br>

of life that thronged the people<br>

who've become the grey-streaked ashes<br>

of collective memory.<br><br>

Keenly feel wonderment, my listener,<br>

for how she draws a gentle presence<br>

to dispel the charnal house legacy<br>

of skeletal corpses that numb<br>

compassion leaving but the memory<br>

of the killing and the dead<br>

upon lifeless dead. Dead, reason-usurped <br>

dead, dulled-to-echo-silence dead;<br>

a vast community become a single <br>

sustained note of silence.<br>

This, our poet, across the chasm<br>

of her good fortune, supplants<br>

with a glance at gentle Hadassah.<br>

DocktorWuDocktorWuover 15 years ago
Thoughts on "Bread"

Eve,

I found it thought provoking, the act of creation as sustenance and as a substitute. I think we have all been there. You come on a bit too wrought with reflection for me when you say things like “dying ember.” I enjoyed reading this and it was time well spent and I felt something when reading this.

AnonymousAnonymousover 15 years ago
You're on

an entirely distant and beautiful dimension. I'll admit the meaning of much of what I read of yours (like this one) is beyond my ability to comprehend. It's like it's not for quick skims. On the other hand if I dare look too close my own ineptness makes me stumble and dangle forever on the sharp edges of Wicked's universe.