Sunday, February 15, 2015

On Approaching Seventy, Joan Seliger Sidney

On Approaching Seventy
by Joan Seliger Sidney


Watching the hands of my son
kneading challah dough
on the maple cutting board
in my kitchen, a memory


rises of my mother
bending over our kitchen table
in Flatbush, pressing, stretching,
folding flour, water, eggs


into a living elastic.
Sometimes in my dreams, Mom
appears, whispers of her mother
in her kitchen in Zurawno


in the pre-dawn dark,
by the light of the kerosene
lamp, pulling and pushing
the yeasty challah dough


until my son covers it
with a clean white cloth
and leaves it in the warm
electric oven to rise.


"On Approaching Seventy" by Joan Seliger Sidney from Bereft and Blessed. © Antrim House Press, 2014

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