Needing to Be Near

Maybe it’s a sign I’m maturing
that on my morning walk to work
I like to stop at Old City Bakery
and watch a couple of middle-aged women
in aprons, warm hands dusty with flour, carry loaves
by the armful, as sturdy wives do in folktales
with wood for the fire and bread in the oven,
ready to pull your loaf into a bread-sized bag
like putting on a fresh sock for you—
this domesticity at dawn moves and stirs
the belly and feeds the faith
that certain kinds of ritual can endure and endear.

I was saying maybe it’s a sign I’m maturing,
my savoring whatever this is I’m savoring,
until on my way home today I saw a boy
all of nine, nose in the open window, eyes closed,
nostrils flaring for fresh-baked cinnamon buns
and, perhaps like me, needing to be near the glow
of one particular woman in white
who paused to look at us through the open frame—
the corners of her mouth rising naturally
as she and the sun do each day,
one hand on hip, the other wiping her brow
and leaving a floury trail,
her pony tail loosening
like a wheat sheaf in a Midwestern wind.

Skipping Stones Near Erie, PA

The best skipping stones still in a pond sink
like cannonball laughter at a funeral wake
or like my daughter’s eyelids about eight
in the evening when my mother declines
more meatloaf for too much Merlot, or just
like stones sunk in this pond, which is deeper

than the summer sun will dare penetrate,
in part because stuck in muck down below
is a cooler rusty as fishing lures
lost but still packed to the gills with gray meat
never grilled by the bully who cast it
there on Memorial Day. Maybe the best

skipping stones are the ones that skip across
to the other side of the pond or are shot
at the bull’s eye of my father, or like
the heavy ones dropped and left out of hand
are the stones that never get skipped at all—
like the kidney stones that dropped him to his knees.

Laird Kopp's work has appeared in Cymbals, Echoes Magazine, Manifold, and several publications in the Philadelphia area. Currently an English teacher and poetry club advisor at The Haverford School (PA), he also enjoys composing and performing folk-rock songs with his brother at venues in Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

Email: Laird Kopp

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