January 08

Late Love Poem

Shirley Kaufman

I’d like to be soft bread
fresh from the oven
fragrant and warm
about to be eaten.

I need your hands
to hold and shape me
smooth my rough edges
into something new.

If we could wrap
our old selves
around each other
we could make more

than a loaf of bread.
We could sing blessings
as we break it
sing heaven sing love.

Shirley Kaufman is an American poet and translator who has lived in Israel for thirty years. Her books included Roots In The Air: New and Selected Poems and Threshold, both from Cooper Canyon Press. Her transalted and edited works include the The Flower of Anarchy: Selected Poems of Meir Wieseltier and The Defian Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems from Antiquity to the Present.