We cannot eat this bread.

A shadow reached all the way around

the sky

as a life tilted away like a

country road headed north.

 

We sometimes forget

just how to move air in and out —

There are no easy breaths here.

We search for life, and find

loss instead.

We seek reasons, but find

no words

but “broken,” “mystery,” “gone,” “sorry.”

 

Starved, we long for light, but find

the black wings of a darkness too vast

to walk through.  Meanwhile

 I will cry, then

I will bake a new kind of bread to awaken

a different kind of morning.

 J. Pratt-Walter, (c)  8/2017