Gotta love poetry class...

A Feminist Looks At Baking

The sweet yeasty aroma
has been singing their song
long before I pull the loaves
from my oven.
A simple process to create
something so sublime.

First wake the yeast
with sugar and warm water.
Then tumble in flour and salt.
Dough blooms joyfully
under deliberate hands,
becoming soft and smooth.

After the first and second rise,
the dough is stretched and shaped
and placed into the hot oven
where the yeast will take one last valiant breath
before finally succumbing to the heat.

Baking is a lost art.
If not lost than losing.
Knowledge swept away to an undisclosed location.
Strangled in the night
along with homemade pickles and
the family farm.

Kitchen bound women in the forties and fifties
may have seen their
very freedom presenting itself
with the advent of sliced, white bread.
And I can't blame them.
I would have skipped right alongside them
to the nearest Piggly-Wiggly,
tossed my apron string oppression into the air
and sang

"Hallelujah!"

The simple act of baking
is so weighted with meaning.
The bread, a fragrant melody,
a creation of crumb and crust
with the taste of a thousand harvests.

No one knew what they might give up by forgetting.

A little poetry to mix things up...

Thoughts On Narcissism

Apples lined up,
gleaming in rows,
bygone stars in a wax museum,
believably authentic to the ignorant eye.
There are oranges
shipped 3000 miles from Florida.
dimpled little navels,
sweet tangerines,
sunning themselves in the fluorescent lights,
blissfully unaware that the truck that brought them
was belching toxic fumes along the way.
Ahh, but wait.
Leave that air-conditioned tomb.

With just the slightest bit of care and effort and sacrifice
(however un-American that may be)
you could stop trampling and destroying.
Learn the way, back
to the things we used to know
just 50 years ago,
before refrigerated box cars
and the blatant squandering of our resources.

And now for the typical response:
Why does it matter?
Why should I have to wait to have what I want, when I want it?
I am most important.
I am the dominant species.
The earth will repeatedly crack itself open like an egg
to give me whatever I hunger for.

These are the thoughts
that plant themselves in my mind
as I bury my hands in the soil
of my garden, struggling
to make sense
of this world,
too consumed with convenience
to care.

-SMS