Devotions

Each morning
            like prayer, my grandmam-maw
would fold her hands
            in love and scoop
her daily measure of bread
                                           (still formless, soft powder)
            into her greased palms.
It was god she folded
            into white mountains.    
                                           (Do we love our own bitter
                                           leavens, the stuff that makes us rise?)
And it was love she cut
            with patience into her biscuits.
                                          (Remember: my joy and pleasant memory was glued
                                           into form from the fat of slaughtered hogs.)
And she would hum
            one hand on her hip
            one in a messy pile
scooping and shaping imperfect art,
laughing at the willfulness each
            took as she stamped them out
from the whole.
                                          (What was left, she and I would gather up into
                                          a fanciful anemone of dough,
                                          my favorite one: I called it -- and it was mine.)
Each morning
            the whole world would gather
in raucous communion,
            cows to be milked
            chickens to be fed
            horses to be curried
and break
            the wafered biscuits
of her diurnal passion.

— VH McKinnie

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