the Pope’s loss is my gain,
it seems:
this old dough mixer
pulled out of a boarded-up church
(St-Dominic’s) up on State Street
in Portland. I imagine a 40-year
apprenticeship making sacramental wafers
and dinner buns for bingo night socials. Definitely a
pagan machine, trade name Vulcan, bidding its time
‘til the old congregation dies off, the building
de-consecrated, so it can find fulfillment in the
oily-sweat work of ball-bearing muscled shoving around
our super-slack dough. Only a half-mile from
the hospital where our first-born popped, that belfry, and just blocks
from where Grandmother Bridges sang in the Mikado,
summer of 1926…
in view of the harbor, so the sea level and salt air
have their particular influences on the outcome
of the loaf. Oh, these little bits of sweet & sour, the un-
avoidable spores of places and people & the things they used, we’ll
toss it all in the 80 quart bowl, set-up the hook and throw her in
first gear. That’s how we get the rise and flavor. That, and putting
on some Van Morrison while the air gets dusty.