naming bread after your mother

it must have seemed such
a good idea at the time
the mother you lost reborn
to thrive once more and
prayed for every morning

and every morning too
halved into kissing loaves
warm sweet-scented yeast-
scented as your newborn
soon to-be-nurtured nation

you could not have seen
the calloused fingers at
the crust and how they
would take a cleaver to
carve your mother into slabs

how your mother would
be pronged on to the wires
of a toasting fork and held
over the lowering flames
and slowly browned

how your mother's dried
and crumbled remains
would be strewn later
in an act of kindness
for hungry starlings choughs
and cock sparrows to
squabble over in dusty yards

how your mother would
then survive as lime stains
white as bread and dried
on windowsills flag poles
splotched like laughter
on the black branches
of trees in winter