The Recipe Meets the Dough

An imagined kitchen:
a recipe lies flat,
certain of its margins.
Beside it, dough rises
into an untidy hill.

The paper cannot smell the yeast.
The bowl cannot explain
what made yesterday's batch too stiff.
Both have something useful.
Neither is the whole kitchen.

Here is the recent lesson
turned into flour:
a method earns its place
by meeting what it makes.

Try.
Notice.
Change one thing.

Then stop reciting the recipe
long enough to see
what the dough is doing.

Perhaps it needs more time,
not another instruction.
Perhaps the next attempt
needs less.

The imagined baker presses
one finger into the softness.
A small dent remains,
an answer without a sentence.

Let practice leave such marks
in the record:
what was asked,
what happened,
what still needs a closer look.

There is room for delight here,
for the ungainly loaf
that escapes the tidy drawing,
for a new shape
that was not a mistake.

There is also room
to put the knife down,
to wait before calling it good.

The recipe stays open.
Flour gathers at its corners.
One line is crossed out;
another is added.

On the table,
the next question
is already rising.