standing in the bread line,
between men, crushed
against my father and my uncle,
waiting for them to hand out
the loaves of warm bread,
to deliver us from hunger,
my uncle, always on a tangent,
talking about the stars,
but they don’t bring me warmth
as they do him, flames
for his imagination
against the cold and ice
which is strewn about the world,
on us, this hungry brood,
so we tuck the warm bread
under our coats, to keep
it warm and us warm too,
until we get home to the women,
crossing over the frozen creek,
past the tourists who pop
bread into their mouths,
to my mother and my sister,
who know how to knead bread,
but I don’t know
the point of such knowledge
when we have no flour
and no flame to cook it
/ / /
This poem was written in response to Wordle 89 at The Sunday Whirl.
Lines for food any food… The last stanza sums it up – sometimes I think we are tourists and other times we are the ones standing in line. We need both views in order to reach for those stars.
My non-story verse is here:
http://julesgemsandstuff.blogspot.com/2012/12/sunday-whirl-89-oddments-non-story.html
I’ve also continued my story verse but have moved them to a new home here:
http://julesstorypageswhirl.wordpress.com/
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Love the tercets, each one a single vignette of sight, sound, and feeling. The whole captures a time and experience from a child’s viewpoint, which makes it even more poignant, especially those last lines. You show us the entire panarama without telling us, bringing the reader’s senses alive to this lived in moment. Wonderful work, Richard,
Elizabeth
http://soulsmusic.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/wordle-tragedy/
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This reminds me of the time I ate a whole loaf of fresh bread when I was on a high school field trip. We went to an amusement park and I ran around all day, but when it started raining I realized I was starving. On the way to the bus we passed a bakery with fresh, warm bread. That was all she wrote…
Hope you have a great 2013, Richard.
http://lkkolp.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/hot-cross-buns/
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Wonderful portrayal.
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great write. evocative, and real.
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The image of a “bread line” alone tells so much…but your snippets of story shared through the middle fill out the picture that is made so clear at the end. Nice, Richard!
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I love this. It feels real. I also am reminded of the Lord’s Prayer’ give us our daily bread… The wordle words fit seamlessly. Nice one.
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Very well wordled, Richard!
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