Bread and Poetry

Ms. Grace my darling bread baker.
Put on the tea kettle, take out the jam,
we will have the Irish chat.
Bread and poetry co-joined. Food
for the body and the soul.

Poetry is a life-cherishing force. For

poems are not words, after all, but fires 

for the cold, ropes let down to the lost,

something as necessary as bread in the

pockets of the hungry.

_ Mary Oliver