Punch down a lump of dough and break up all the little houses of air. Roll them out flat, then gather them back to the center and they rise again, higher than the rim of the bowl.
After the dark, bitter green of herbs, here are lemons to pucker the mouth, pomegranate seeds to sweeten the fingers, sprigs of mint to freshen the breath.
A wooden block, dried buckwheat for a pillow; a cup of beans to fill a little sack. Every last one streaked with its secret name.
Was any of it enough, was it too little? Why should it be difficult to open the heart wider and give thanks to the open sky?
Year after year, the shoemaker shapes the same kind of sole. After he dies, the only blueprints that remain are those that rain and wind will not have erased from the dirt.