Braiding the challah

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)

            for Rachel

I watched as your hands melted

into soft dough, the dome of it,

puffed and swollen, and how naturally

your fingers formed and divided it

into four roughly equal parts,

then each of those into snakes,

the kind I remembered creating

in kindergarten with clay.

 
I watched as you designed four

round Challahs as Rosh Hashanah

gifts for friends. You said it was easy, 

and I wanted to believe that, as I observed

you, the snake charmer, plaiting the strands. 

You alone knew the rhythm, the form 

of what would soon become four fragrant crowns.

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Between the Lines, PoetsWest Literary Journal, and 3 Elements Review. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129, a project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times beyond Covid.