The bakery burned all night.
Flames rose like astonished birds.
The smell of sugar turned bitter
as smoke stitched itself into the trees.
By morning the windows wept soot.
Someone said they saw a face
in the rising ash, the baker’s wife
or no one at all.
Children came with buckets,
scooping black crusts into the air,
pretending it was snow.
I stood by the curb,
holding a loaf I’d bought yesterday,
still soft, still throbbing with warmth.
Steve Klepetar lives in the Berkshires in Massachusetts. He is a contributing editor for Verse-Virtual. His poems have appeared widely in the U.S. and abroad and have received several nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.
