Giving Time
The supplicant’s desire:
mornings sliced into perfect pieces, afternoons
dipped in honey, evenings freed.
A gift of absence.
To gather and bear, shaping
the resultant minutes,
she takes yeast from the air, adds
flour, water and salt.
Matched with the ripening
hour and the sweetened bitter taste,
I recall how blood
seeped through the towel, and
observe on the table the
cheese, plums, the harvested day.
* * *
This originally appeared on Bonnie Mcclellan’s International Poetry Month website. A recording is also available there: https://bonniemcclellan.wordpress.com/2015/02/17/giving-time-by-robert-okaji/
O at the Edges 
You’re skill with words is awe inspiring!
LikeLiked by 2 people
You are very kind, Barbara. Thank you!
LikeLiked by 2 people
My mind is whirling on “the gift of absence” … so many I’d readily banish into absence if I could … yet now I’m puzzling if maybe I could achieve more peace by simply exiting myself from the crazy planet … give myself the gift of absence. Alas, no guarantees I’d land in any less frustrating surroundings …
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh, how I understand both sentiments!
LikeLiked by 1 person