Baker

By vocation, my grandpa was

a baker. He'd spend the nights
mixing the flour, yeast and eggs,
adding some sugar to reality
so short of sweet.
He'd form
raw dough
into - as if - ceramic blocks
only they were
so soft and kind
in brown containers
of the crust.

He'd get back home
before dawn.
He'd kiss each child
on their foreheads or cheeks.

His ways were oh so fine, so full
of joy he would create from ash and spit.
He smoked, played cards, he sang
and danced 
to the music he carried around
inside (the flames restricted
by the oven door).

He was so welcome in each company, 
a soul of each small gathering, a loaf
of bread in the little worlds
of people claimed
by war. His second wife

lost her fiancé and couldn't find 
herself, or any sense. He married her
and her burden too for it was 
impossible to get them
apart.

He'd work - was made to - as
a quarryman in Switzerland. 
Each time
he got back home
he made a child, and left again
until the war's end. He couldn't know
what was going on 
in the mazes of that other mind.

His first wife died 
of a lung disease
after having 
their child.

He didn't witness that, playing cards,
laughing the cruelty
of life

in the face.

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