A small, good thing

For a now defunct bakery in my college town

You ravel dough thrice: kneading over graceful hand

and graceful hand. It’s quicker to use the processor, 

but where’s the joy in machinery? From what else 

do you craft love but the madness of intentional loss?

Thus I picture giving back. Intention. Care. Here, I trace

many raw lines between time and love. This thing

they call “efficiency” unbounds me in many ways and all 

of them are alienating. How am I to live in a culture of robotic 

losslessness? In life we are slow; in life we are messy. Here 

we dream of a leisurely revolution. We do not take haste; 

we will not be efficient. Revel in our uselessness; understand 

our hermeneutic of love; grasp, too, our labor of modern 

inefficiency. Evidenced in kneading dough and hands canvassed 

in authentic labor, here — here is a small, good thing.