David Thornbrugh

 

The bread I take for granted in Polish bakeries,

piekarnia, stacked in profusion on wooden shelves,

brown loaves like footballs with cracking crusts,

dimpled domes that glow like pumpkins,

alligator slabs sold by the kilo

and sliced like chunks of firewood,

the fluffy white bread loaves as moist as angel food cake,

the traditional loaves of rye flour suitable

for keeping friars in woolen robes layered in fat,

all these cylinders of baked bread

that to my eye represent Poland,

yellow wheat fields rumpled and smoothed

by August breezes heavy with threatened rain,

all these examples of the baker’s art as old as Rome or

Wawel Castle stones slippery with dragon blood,

all this bread is new, rediscovered since communism

collapsed like a soufflé behind a slammed oven door.

 

All we had then was

one kind of white bread

and one of graham flour,

and that only on certain days.

You had to stand on line for days to get a loaf,

sometimes you hired people to stand on line for you,

you gave them a share of whatever you bought.

 

These loaves I take for granted,

sour dough, bran, whole wheat

pebbled with flax seeds and wheat berries

had to be rediscovered,

reinvented, salvaged from old peoples’ fading,

famished memories.

 

If I have to wait in line

more than five minutes,

I walk away.