from ‘Human Work’

Lebkuchen
 
Gingerbread gloom; I gather home.

While the last wasp, defiant,
enters and leaves the snow shape of mountains,
among trees, the painted woods, the tall pines
and the spruce, and the North’s winter,
the North’s visor, lowers, inspires ingredients:

I have Hansel-and-Gretel’s prayer
searching the whereabouts of tracks, routes out.
I make time do.
Old mother hands to handle, grainy, sticky.

I have Grimm’s honey, Grimm’s fat.
A disturbed pool in the forest-clearing of my bowl.

It froths a beard at a small dark pane.

The knock of the axe, of the echo; the hum of flies,
and summer unwinding.

I add orange; add lemon zest.
...