The Daily Bread

I saw countries embrace my good mornings saying: Be worthy of the bread's aroma, may the flowers of the pavements make you elegant. There is still fire on your mother's hearth, and the welcome is as warm as bread

-Mahmoud Darwish

Am I not worthy of this bread's aroma

That my mother rolled and kneaded into the night

Wiping sacrifice with the back of her right hand 

From a determined brow peppered with sweat

The warmth of hearths, the warmth of beating hearts

Lain and slain on stone altars as humble offerings

This snug incubation, of me in a belly distended

Is that of yeasty dough rising in modern hearths

A curious and vigilant eye on transformative processes

Turning ingredients into sustenance, zygote into heartbeat

One hand to the glass of the oven door, and the other 

To the conclusive processes of glassed in-vitro

Bearing her own swollen feet and those that kick her walls

The sleepless nights are a vigil to the miracles of gestation

The time has come, the bread rests on the high counter

The time has come, she has given birth to a firstborn

But it takes patience for it to become an unfearing daughter

Standing on her own two feet in the living room and the world 

This daily bread, ready to be partaken in, is generously served 

By my mother's hard work who nods to me beyond the veil

I break the bread, let the aroma that I am worth, fill my chest

Before putting the pieces to my lips, a kiss that fortifies

Dear Daughter, she says to me in the unswallowable silences

There will always be bread of my hands to eat and be filled with

For God gave us the light by which I bake, and you break this bread 

Whose nostalgic aroma, of which you are worthy, fills a future