Making Bread

The lungs of bread are blackened by smoke
and heavy machinery weeps.
Children stand outside schools
refusing to play with their toys,
while a flower breaks its neck in a high speed chase
and a check is written to pay for eight new fighter-bombers.

Maybe this is why bread rises
like an angry crowd, spilling over
the sides of the bowl.
Maybe there’s something as necessary as taxes,
a thirst the throat longs for,
a dream our sleep leaps to embrace.

(1986)

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