Bake Each Day Poem by gershon hepner

Bake each day like bread, as fresh
as loaves you put into the oven,
but make sure you don’t toast the flesh,
by adding spirit when you daven.


Janet Maslin reviews Barbara Kingsolver’s “Prodigal Summer” (HarperCollins) in the NYT, on November 2,2000 (“3 Lines United by the Fecundity of Summer’) . The author describes “a world baked fresh daily, ” adding: “Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.” I dedicate this poem to my son Zachary, who always davens with great spirit.

11/3/00