Sunday Poetry

Sunday Baking
He thinks she cannot see him through the window,
smoking his cigar in the slow Sunday dusk.
That’s what these evening are for,
smoking and reading an easy magazine.
From a chair on the porch he moves to watch her,
kneading and pulling this days bread.
He should speak, offer his assistance
He could grease the pans and sweep the flour dust,
pull the damp hair away from her forehead
as she smiles and stretches this thing she knows.
But the kitchen seems crowded when she works,
full of several people she has been.
The girl whose cupped hands splashed his back,
the one whose fingers learned his skin,
the woman whose whole body is in this baking.
It is the hands of this woman that haunt him.
Although it is a damn thing, it carries him.
The bread is in the oven, and the smell
of love is thick inside, and he knows
that the bread, the woman and the house are not his,
that this is what is meant by home.
Gailmarie Pahmeier