Leavening Agents
for Ana
Sometimes, my parents left me
at the Methodist Sunday school
and then went out to breakfast.
It was the only religious training I ever had,
but when the teacher asked,
in a lesson about the power of Jesus,
if anyone knew what yeast was,
only I among the children could follow
the metaphor. I had seen with my own eyes,
how, fed by warm water and honey
my mother added to the big bowl,
yeast was like holy hands raising
the roof on every loaf.
I learned to bake young,
to watch for the dough’s rise
beneath its thick towel, to pound
it back down before shaping.
How I loved the bread that grew
a hard shell in our oven’s heat,
standing tall above the edges of its pan.
He doesn’t remember now,
but I taught my son to bake,
guided his hands, dusted soft
with flour, showed him the easy
rhythm of kneading. Soon, he’ll be
a father, tiny seed of him tucked
into the dark hollow of his love.
Her belly rounds, swelling.
Inside it, a boy my mother will never see
grows, pressing his mother’s flesh
with his feet. He is like bread,
a blessing that nourishes
before it is even ready,
the not-yet-visible proof
of what sustains us.
Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain and What Small Sound and translator of Max Sessner’s Whoever Drowned Here, all from Red Hen Press. Her work appears in B O D Y, ELLE, Los Angeles Review of Books, New England Review, and Rattle. She is the Marin County Poet Laureate, former poetry editor of River Styx, and translation editor of the Los Angeles Review. She teaches embroidery and poetry at San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. (Photo courtesy of Emily Petrie)
