Starter

STARTER

Start with the flour, the water.
Start with the starter, with the start.
The living things vibrating there, invisible to eye.
Start with the beginning, of life, where did it start
sprinkle on the top rosemary and thyme grown from a seed
Where did it start
whose seed was it that gave me the plant I eat
Imagine living all life from the very start
growing your trees to build your house.

A garden of my own: I know what seeds I planted where.
Beyond those I cannot see.
Return to the start, make the starter,
create the dough that makes the bread.

Make my own bread, the stuff of life
the slow-burning energy of slow-grown grains
slow sugars, safer this way
comfort within safe walls, the dough warm in palms
moulded in time – grains wrought by wind and chance
before they became the grain
willed by ancestors long ago
and before the grain I do not know
beyond the cells we do not know

I started it but it started long before me
within walls, within the ancestry
of home and hearth and grains transformed
by human hands in open lands, upon living soil.

The living starter as sustenance
warmed into dough,
fragrant as earth
old certainty in a world asunder.

[Paris, 23 April-1 May 2020]

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