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Tuesday, April 05, 2011

Tuesday Poem: Fresh Bread


Tuesday Poem is one year young! On the main hub site, there is a collective poem which is being added to all week by the Tuesday Poets. Watch it as it develops.

Here, I am posting one of my early poems as my contribution for the week. We were asked for something celebratory, and this came to mind as both celebratory and youthful. "Fresh Bread" was first published in the Christchurch Press and in the anthology "Big Sky" edited by James Norcliffe and Bernadette Hall.




Fresh Bread

You walked home from the dairy
the loaf still warm
cradled in your arms
You picked at the kissing crust
couldn't resist

That afternoon
you climbed to the top of the tallest pine
rolled down the hillside till you were so dizzy
the hillside rolled down you
made daisy chains a mile long
stayed out till sunset
gulping blue sky

Ate bread still soft
in rough chunks
thick with butter
not like grandma's sandwiches
cut from yesterday's loaf
in careful thin slices.

copyright Catherine Fitchett



The "kissing crust" may not be familiar to all readers. In the days before sliced bread, our bread came as a white loaf of two halves which could easily be pulled apart. The torn surface where the two halves met is what we called the "kissing crust". For some reason, we always competed to see who would be allowed to have it - fresh, soft and spread with thick chunks of butter.

A "dairy" in New Zealand is a convenience store which sells milk, bread and other items.

5 comments:

Helen Lowe said...

I remember "kissing crusts", Catherine--and those white loaves. :)

Gerry Snape said...

Happy first year ! I've just made some Irish wheaten soda bread and the best thing ever is to tear it apart and slather it with butter...so from now obn it will be called the kissing bread! Hope some things are getting back to a kind of normality.

Mary McCallum said...

Kissing crust! love it. Warm feeling poem, Catherine. I remember walking home with a white bread loaf from the dairy and picking and picking at it. Bliss.

Joseph Harker said...

Before I got to the afterword, I thought "kissing crust" was a great phrase itself: that crust which tickles the lips. Added another eddy of beauty to the flow of this... well done. :)

AJ Ponder said...

It's the rolling down of hillsides that caught me. Oh the exuberance of youth, and daisy chains and the desire for nothing more than devouring generous chunks of fresh bread :)