samuel louis spencer

sourdough #1

I don’t know how to repay you,
but I’ve started by leaving this loaf
of sourdough I learned to bake
for the sake of having something
to leave.

I don’t know how to repay you
and the funny thing about repentance is
you have to have something to repent
in the first place, and for so

long, too long, I adorned your
slender form with the foliage I found
discarded in the Garden of Eden,
obscuring the naked trueness of you.

I don’t know how to repay you
because atonement is strange,
it’s never an equal. That is why
you lent me the whole of you,
your soul and your blue, blue eyes–
And why there’s a loaf of
bread resting on your doorstep,
waiting to be picked up with two hands
and brought in, into the place I long to be but

I don’t know how to. Repay you
with this bomb-ass loaf of bread instead?

That, love, I can do.

sourdough #13

The starter is the hardest step
of the process. Not because
it requires lots of effort
or a special technique, but
because it denotes all other
creations and, therefore, is the
culmination of all the things
combined. Commitment
is a scary thing, and I can’t
imagine how God felt

before speaking this endlessness
into being; when He said those
words, lovingly and with care:
“Let there be loaf”

And it was good.

Two Sourdough Poems

samuel louis spencer

sourdough #1

sourdough #13