​POETRY  -  
          With the Theme of Making or Breaking Bread

"Every week he donned an apron and out of the oven
would come another loaf."
                                     Photo by Weebly.com                                    

My Dad Baking Bread
by Karen Marker

​After he retired my father rose up newly made
because of the gift of a starter, and then
with just flour and water he began to bake
sourdough bread. Once he had started he couldn’t stop.
Every week he donned an apron and out of the oven
would come another loaf.  All of his life
of hard work, trying to prove himself, softened.  
 
The whiz kid, quiz show winner from the streets
of Philly, who knew how to do magic tricks
with numbers, weighed his thoughts and stuttered--
​grew up to become a polymer scientist who worked
in the industry and was weighted by worry
because long ago he’d been blacklisted
and he needed that monthly paycheck
so his family could lead a middle-class life.
All those weekends he gave up for his job,
that worry, is what I remembered when I left home
clinging to Diet for a Small Planet
so I could live a different kind of life.
 
But even when I tried every week to make Tassajara bread
I never made something like my father did when 
out of this act of fermentation his sourdough
proved he was really a baker. This man,
whose Jewish family had cast off Shabbat and challah,
now was filled by another type of sustenance--
the wonder he’d first felt when he learned 
about Newton and Einstein. Maybe it was the crisp hard
crust, how it hid the warmth. Or the work it took
with his hands, what went into its making, the wait
while the dough expanded. The tangy taste. 
The way its aromas took over the house.  Or maybe
it reminded him of those days he had held me,
a new baby, over his shoulder, his eyes brimming.
Maybe it felt like a miracle, all the proof
he needed that he had done enough.

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​​Karen Marker is a retired school psychologist who turns to her studies in psychology, classical mythology, family ancestry and nature for her inspiration as a poet and memoirist. Her work has been published in various anthologies, won awards through the Ina Coolbrith Circle and the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and been included in the Kent State University May 4th Archives. Her first book of poetry Beneath the Blue Umbrella will be coming out with Finishing Line Press Beneath at the end of 2024.

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