Bread

My mother, in the final years of her life,

finally in the small farmhouse 

she had dreamed of her whole life,

with a flock of chickens to feed, 

and an old, shabby farmhouse kitchen,

spent a glorious year or two 

kneading dough and baking bread

and cinnamon buns,

that rose on the wings 

of her satisfied dreams

and fed her family.

"How I love it when you roll 

into the driveway!" she'd exclaim.

"You think everything is funny!"

(Everything is!)

She had given up on her dream,

but here it was, unexpectedly:

little hobby farm, with a pond,

a horse in the pasture, 

and deer wandering through.

She cooked up a storm till that last year, 

when her eyesight and her health 

began fading fast 

and she took to her bed.

I found her bread recipe the other day,

written in her by-then huge but still flowing script: Bread. 

And it's a funny thing.

I can measure and mix and knead 

till the chickens come home to roost,

but I can't get that darned bread 

to rise as it did for her,

in that white and brown kitchen on Plested Road,

where dream and reality merged 

for a few too-short, precious, golden years.

for Grace's prompt at dVerse: Bread