“The smallness of people is crushing” -Philip Roth
When there is none
And autumn’s gold has withered under icy rain
You can see how each morning twig is swagged with glitter
Then the roads lose their seduction and we snug our day
Turn to recipes for the old celebrations
Bake bread as the soap opera rises
Unreals upon the screen: the order of the inquiry
A stark contrast to the disorder of the crime
To the order of yeast and snow
It seems so trivial, so juvenile
So small
As the flakes multiply in number and size
While behind the scenes others have been given
Authority over courts and regulations:
Your air, your public lands, your water
Their smallness
I always wonder: don’t they have children of their own
Have they ever seen the bread rise
The yeast budding the dough
The other road not taken
That scrim of ice upon each branch
That scrim of diplomacy upon the lie
That scrim of haughtiness upon the defender
That scrim of order in each flake and loaf
An avalanche of facts
Where the rubber meets the road
And the yeast rises in its proof.
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Yvonne Daley is a career journalist who returned to poetry for sanity in these troubled times. She lives in Vermont, still a sane place.
Photo by Alex Iby.
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