JAMIE
DEDES
SUMMER IN THE CITY
The heat rose that
summer, as it did every year,
in thick
nauseating sooty waves from red bricked
buildings, black
asphalt and gray sidewalks,
the unrelenting
humidity trapping us in sweat.
Brooklyn it
seemed, that younger heaven,
had slipped into
the Hudson and found its way
out to the great
Atlantic and on to some tropic.
We so yearned for
an air-conditioned escape,
cold sodas and
chilled bowls of ice cream.
Cool back then
could be had for the purchase of
two red tickets,
one for my mom and one for me.
Only fifty-cents
each for air-conditioned movie seats,
heart-throbbing
honey-dreams and sugared
drops of sultry
lives and deftly stirred emotions.
YOU LEFT TO PIROUETTE
ON THE MOON
you left one
winter day to balancé on sunbeams
and pirouette on
the moon, artfully swirling
lunar dust and
scattering it over our dreams,
sparking our lives
with your memory, your love
a legacy of dance
for tiny ballerinas
…………see us now . .
.
as well-worn as
your old toe shoes
ECCE PANIS
In nomine Patris,
et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti …
Clad in blue-gray
woolly plaid, black oxfords
and pressed,
pristine white uniform-blouse
on the morning
walk from the dorms to the convent,
past the apple
orchard dripping rubescent fruit,
past long-lashed
benign cows gently grazing,
walking briskly
across that green pasture land
into the greener
wood rich in conifers and
the piney debris
that crunches amicably under foot,
in single-minded
pursuit of that brass-hinged door,
on into aprons, to
Sister Mary Francis, the kitchen, bread.
… we therefore
beseech thee, O Lord, to be appeased, and to receive this offering of our
bounden duty, as also of thy whole household …
The romance was
not with bread to eat,
but with yeasts to
proof, batters to mix,
and dough to
knead, and rest, and grow –
that beautiful,
mystical living thing you have
before the baking
and dying into bread, and with
the crackling
timpani of wood-ovens firing up, pans crashing,
the rhythmic swish
and sway of our community,
punctuated by the
clicking of Sister’s rosary as she
monitors the
students and novices in silent industry at bakers’ tables.
This is the sacred
work of those meditative hours before Mass and school
and the business
of music lessons and art classes and
the methodical
ticking of Liturgical Hours until finally Compline, sleep and
the contemplation
of that final sleep and dust-to-dust.
And this being
Tuesday, the day to commemorate St. John the Baptist,
and the day to
bake our bread for the week to come.
…order our days in
thy peace; grant that we be rescued from eternal damnation and counted within
the fold of thine elect. Through Christ our Lord …
The next bake day,
Thursday, commemorates the Holy Apostles.
Oh, palpable
Presence, we work in the silence of Adoration,
preparing pure
wafers for a week of Masses.
In a solemn alcove
reserved for this task,
we mix flour,
salt, and holy water blessed by Father Gregory,
then the fragile
process of baking on baking tongs,
silvery antiques,
perhaps a hundred years old.
… which offering
do thou, O God, vouchsafe in all things …
Receiving the
Eucharist
knowing it was
formed by my own hand.
…to bless,
consecrate, approve, make reasonable and acceptable
that it may become
for us the Body and Blood of thy most beloved Son,our Lord Jesus Christ…
Friday, The Cross
and Theotokos (Mary),
mother of both God
and man, Divine and human.
A girl, like me,
perhaps a baker of breads.
…who the day
before he suffered took bread into his holy and venerable hands, and with his
eyes lifted up to heaven, unto thee, God, his almighty Father, giving thanks to
thee …
Mysterious.
Numinous. Inexplicable.
A lifetime ahead
to figure it out.
Ecce Panis.
Take this Bread.
… he blessed, brake,
and gave to his disciples saying: Take and eat ye all of this…
from the pastures
and the woods, from the sky and the stream
from nature’s
great cathedrals, everywhere present
... hoc est enim
Corpus meum…
for this is my
body
for this is my
life
Amen.
“Where is God? Wherever you let him in.” Rabbi
Menachem Mendel Morgensztern of Kotzk, Poland 1787
JAMIE DEDES
JAMIE DEDES: She is a writer,
poet, and former columnist. She runs The Poet by Day jamiededes.com, an
information hub for poets and writers and she is the Managing Editor of The
BeZine, published by The Bardo Group/Beguines, a virtual arts collective she
founded. Her work is featured in a variety of outlets including Levure
litterautre, Ramingo's Porch, Vita Brevis Literature, Compass Rose, Connotation
Press, The Bar NoneGroup, Salamander Cove, Second Light, I Am Not A Silent
Poet,Meta /Phor(e) /Play, and California Woman.
I loved these poems.
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