Baker's Trinity -- by Kim Ode

Baker I

The Hobart scares me, frankly.

Its steel arm churning through

Small oceans of dough

Rising and falling in the bakery’s battered cauldron

Not unlike how Captain Hook made Wendy tremble

Before she found her nerve.

My home mixer’s tidy dough hook

Is, in suburban scale, a mere toenail

Writhing efficiently through

A baby’s bottom of dough that

Gratefully

Makes just two loaves.

Sometimes I go off the grid

With my Ma Ingalls bowl,

Smiling placidly at the unemployed outlet

Hands clad in gloves of flour and water

As I lift and stretch and turn and fold

Dough that has behaved this way

For centuries.

The kneading leaves me winded

If I’ve done it well enough,

And I catch my breath with Caroline.

Baker II

My poor brick oven.

Good that I sunk its concrete footings

Four feet into the earth

Burdened as it is with metaphor.

Midlife crisis is my answer to why,

Which makes women laugh

Into their elastic waistbands

About my wood-fired therapist’s couch

Brick ovens have a goddess

Of course.

Fornax, who relies on dead trees

To work her magic.

Does she seduce Zeus

To aim his lightning bolts

Toward that elm, that oak?

Or am I overthinking this?

I bake in the 21^st century.

I bake in a suburb.

I bake while my children

Wait for the microwave to ding.

Baker III

When all is said and done

-- As if it ever is ---

An old church cookbook

Holds all the answers

To all the questions of

How long?

How much?

How hot?

How many?

The capture of wisdom so pure and plain

Often makes me underestimate its value,

As did those who recited their recipes

From memory

While sitting distracted in the pews.