I grew up
and lived for many years
on an island of bread:

bread mountains, bread roads,
bread coastlines.

I was never hungry,
wanted for nothing,
but I longed to leave
and see flowers
and scars and stones,
and all the rest.

Left eventually
and found everything
I’d dreamed of,

but today, I would offer you
these roses, these diamonds,
for bread.  For home,
even if it’s just a grave
scooped out of bread,
heaped with bread,
surmounted with a bread marker
over me and the scars
I would bring with me
and carry into that white ground.

Take all I’ve found
and let me die
there, no longer hungry
for the smell of home,
living in a simple knowledge
of bread,
coveting its warmth
like that which pours
from an old family oven.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations, death, happiness