My mother,
This way
Reaches a hand across
the bed we share
to tap my thigh good night.
It is a calling to my
childhood, this time with her
these days, at this age.
We sleep face to face,
her breath soft against my
forehead, still humming
as she does when she is
awake and busy — intent on
the task of teaching me
what she has already
taught me, has never
before taught me.
“This is how you make the bread.”
She says.
By hand
we mix the ingredients
ourselves
a bit of flour at a time
until arms heavy
with the motion, we
turn it out, smooth
and textured and roll it
over itself.
She presses her
small hands into the dough,
like a breast, round and firm.
And presses her small
weight down in folds.
“See,” she says to me,
“this is how you knead.”
And turns the needing
over to me
so I might know
how to put the weight of me
into dough
and forget myself
in the creation
of smooth elasticity.
My mother
this way
teaches me what I already know,
what she knows
I do not know — yet —
about the
hours of rising and punching
down,
of waiting for ready —
the patience of bread.
Karen Beardslee Kwasny, a writer and educator, is the assistant director at St. Leo University’s South Hampton Roads Center at Naval Air Station Oceana. She lives in Ashville Park, and she represents the Princess Anne District on the Virginia Beach Planning Commission. This poem is from her chapbook, Legacy.
Published by permission.
