Making Bread

I cut this poem out of a magazine when I was in high school - I think. Somehow I didn't save the author's name, and I haven't been able to find it since. Whenever I knead a batch of bread dough I remember it.


Making bread is like making love.
The housekeeping of it takes

me in. I like the floury apron
costume as well as I like

our skin selves, sly in bed.
It rises as you rise,

slow and hunchbacked, spread
out in the loaf pan like

a fat turtle. It doubles in size.
I punch it down, kneading

the milky dough, rolling it over
the way you roll over on your

flat back. We feed ourselves,
mouths wide as teapot spouts,

selfish as crows. The bread
covers itself over and over

in the oven like a smooth sheet,
feeding children, our children,

the children we can't make yet.
In the kitchen I make bread.