Bakery Girl


I couldn’t see the counter for the loaves
were baked in back by sultry older men
in soiled white smocks and sly mustachios.
 
I worked up front. It was my job to close
the sales of sourdough, wheat and multigrain.
I couldn’t see the cashbox for the loaves
 
pulled steaming from hot ovens by those
bakers sauntering through a darkened room
in soiled white smocks and sly mustachios.
 
I yearned to be where they were. So
I wheedled my way to run the slice machine.
I left the clean glass counter for the loaves,
 
for the searing humid furnace, chose
to risk chopped fingers to be near the men
in soiled white smocks and sly mustachios.
 
His hair and beard were gold. Sometimes I froze
using one baguette to push another in.
I couldn’t see the slicer when he loafed
nearby in soiled white smock and sly mustachio.

 
 


Caught Between
 
​
She is painting, or reading;
he is fishing. After all
those years nothing remains.
She is gazing at a miniature
lily pad, he is on the shore,
casting out, or in a small boat,
alone as he liked it. At night
when the gates close and
the frogs sing and the big
catfish rise from the depths
he snags his fill, with no one
to see. She, no longer half-blind
as she was in her last years,
watches the moon or the lack
of moon, the beautiful blur.
He is fishing, she is painting
or remembering the children
she loved, who put her here,
in a bronze plaque on a
soon-to-be-weathered bench.
Both of them ash in the ocean.
Both of them here
in the breath of their eldest
who sits, and sees, and reads,
her heart caught between.