Here’s the question I have to ask myself —
Why is it I go on baking the words
When clearly all that might go on a shelf?
Isn’t “scratch” when instant is there absurd?
Why go to the trouble of scattered flour
When a plastic wrap at the store will do?
No need for dirty dishes and midnight oil
When it’s all already baked for you.
Yet the attraction of what’s difficult
Isn’t only in the tiny finesse.
There’s a larger duty that’s grandly built,
Which may be recipe to the soul’s largesse.
Say what we will for what the easy brings,
Slowness is beauty, despite everything.
About David Breeden
The Reverend Doctor David Breeden has an MFA from The Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, a Ph.D. from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi, with additional study at Breadloaf and in writing and Buddhism at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He also has a Master of Divinity from Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago.
His poetry, essays, and short fiction have appeared in such journals as Mississippi Review, Nebo, Poet Lore, Mid-American Review, North Atlantic Review, Boston Literary Review, Turnstile, Nidus, and Paragraph. He has published four novels and ten books of poetry. He is on the editorial board of Virtual Artist’s Collective, a Chicago publisher. His book, This Is Just To Say: Variations on a Theme of William Carlos Williams, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Award in Religion and The Arts from the American Academy of Religion. His novel Climbing the Air will soon appear from Switchgrass Books, Northern Illinois University.
Breeden is a Unitarian Universalist parish minister in Minnesota.
