Baking Bread

I open the oven door
to a blast of heat 
and hot bread bulging
out of a high tin, brown, crusty
and ready to be taken out.
That smell wafts across 
seventy years to when I can
remember bread being delivered
in a horse and cart.

Carrying a big 
wicker basket full of hot bread, 
the baker would run
house to house whilst his horse
ambled along at a pace 
in perfect sync with the bakers
progress along the street.

Weekday mornings
I would wait out front 
and rush the hot bread 
inside for my mother to make me
sandwiches for lunch.
Mum always complained
that the bread was too hot 
for cutting. I had a steaming 
slice smothered in butter 
before I left for school.

Big, thick, uneven slices
of bread holding metwurst
or cheese or peanut butter
greeted me when I opened 
my lunchbox at school.
Bread was never better.
Nearing eighty, I keep
baking bread, writing poems,
as if trying to recapture 
those pleasures still steaming
in the past before they go.

foodhorsememorypoetryfree verse

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Rowena Velasco

August 7, 2025 at 3:06 AM

This is so cozy, Paul. You can almost smell the bread and feel the warmth off the page. Love how it moves from the present to childhood so naturally — like a memory sneaking in with the steam. That last bit about baking and writing to hold onto the past? Beautiful and real.