Communiqué: A Quarterly Digital Journal

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The Baker's Prayer
by John Poch

My oriflamme at six a.m.
is the ribbon in my Bible
abandoned after Abraham,
after Jacob's birthright trouble,

after Joseph's colorcoat--
his one red stripe from neck
to shoe, so proud among the oats.
His brothers made a vivid wreck

of him, made his mother sure
of death. His fields were divvied up.
Me, I keep coming back to flour
each morning while the world's asleep,

as Joseph came to grain again.
The job's official coats we wear
are only varied covers on
the broken men we always were

or were becoming. And Joseph knew
a baker, heard his raven dream,
foretold a public hanging to
which tree, whose birthday, and what time.

What crime that baker baked is lost
to history. We curse the burns
so easily besetting us,
forgetting the blessed bread of words.

But I love my neighbor as myself.
I work the oven loaf by loaf.
I sometimes put them on the shelf
to cool to give this corner of

the store its warm allure. God make
my taste remember how my life
is new with every wedding cake
bedecked for each awaiting wife.