Though you may be measuring the passing of days in non-traditional ways such as “day 10 of self-isolation” or the new mash-up month of Marprilay, it is April, and this month is National Poetry Month.
In Collingwood, the town’s poet laureate is hoping the community will celebrate the occasion with her by helping her post a poem every day for 30 days.
Day Merrill has called the project 30 Loaves, inspired by the Christian tradition of seeing scripture as “bread for the journey.” A popular daily devotional is called Our Daily Bread, taking its name from the Lord’s Prayer.
“I figured we all need some daily nourishment and poetry is a form that has been ‘feeding’ people for ages,” said Merrill.
The town will be adding one poem to its collingword.ca website everyday in April, and the list begins with a poem by Merrill entitled 30 Loaves.
Here is her poem:
30 Loaves
With five children, my grandmother baked bread every single day
At least one loaf of oatmeal bread, its sweet molasses scent beckoning everyone to stand in the kitchen until it was cool enough to rip apart and slather with sweet butter.
Dense rye bead you could use to build a cabin, the perfect loaf to send off in 5 tin lunch pails with a slab of cheddar cheese and a home-brined pickle.
Banana bread so good you’d pray enough browning bananas would be left in the chipped crockery bowl to require turning into a moist loaf packed with walnuts and joy.
White bread for company, tucked in the bread box for tea sandwiches‒crusts trimmed and a sprig of watercress to impress the minister’s wife or other visiting luminary.
I am not a baker
Unlike cooking (well-suited to my slapdash and cavalier approach),
baking is a science (chemistry) as well as an art.
Akin to alchemy, a magical process by which humble ingredients
are transmuted into divine creations.
Alas, baking is not my forte.
My cookies and mean and hard,
my bread like a doorstop.
One infamous birthday, a cake turned out so badly
that even the racoons who overturned the trash wouldn’t eat it.
But I write poems.
Some are yeasty and rich, inviting you to tear into them and cram them into your mouth.
Others are sturdier, serious and practical poems to keep you going.
Some (I pray) delight you with unexpected sweetness.
Expect no white bread poems from me, nothing to impress you at a distance.
We are all family and deserve honest poems that nourish us body and soul
crusts and all.
If you’re interested in submitting a poem to Collingword.ca, you can email Day Merrill at [email protected].
