Bread: A Returning

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In the hayfields are loaves 
to be lined along barns. 
Like monuments to a lost art 
they have browned in the summer heat, 

something warmed against winter. 
The scent of the air is yeasty after showers.
My grandmother’s dozen loaves a day
fed haying crews raking the fields 

with draft teams. The old log stackers
finally split and gave way to steel, 
then to the compression of bales, 
rolled or rectangular. 

***

We see the tall willows first, 
the two-story farmhouse—cool 
downstairs even at the peak of harvest,
then my father’s bales 

squared high in the stackyard. 
He runs his place however he can, 
for as long as he can. In his sleep 
he re-does it all with horses. 

When I was a child, my mother 
took on the heat of the fields 
after her morning kneading and baking,
the tall black stove consuming

all our arms could carry 
to the woodbox, the axe quick
in her hands, her arms muscular
from the pull of reins. 

***

Even before we enter, 
I can smell the slices 
she will hand us, butter melting
in the soft center of her bread.