Clouds Over Paris

"The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away."
~ Wislawa Szymborska, No Title Required

Perhaps there is a young woman in Paris
who lives above a boulangerie.
Each morning she awakens to the aroma of fresh bread.
And each evening, she dips her bread in a warm
and spicy vegetable broth.
Morning and evening. Day after day.

Life is wonderful this way,
a fragrant new morning,
a contented supper each night.
Happiness rests within these moments.

Having never been to Paris,
I wonder what delectable French bread
tastes and smells like, if it dissolves on the tongue
like angel food, how the aroma reigns the mind
causing a person to close their eyes and melt
into this divinity, forgetting their surroundings ~

LaTour Eiffel
Cathedrale Notre-Dame de Paris
Musee du Louvre

to lose one's sense of direction along the Seine
while sinking into golden, crisp crust
then dissolving further within the delicate, heavenly center.

This is how time travels, how history unfolds ~
the Enlightenment, l'insurrection, and la Revolution,
Napoleon and his Arc de Triomphe, the bombings of WWII.
The past flows like a river through the present and visits the future.

Perhaps the passing of everything is in its own time.
Kneading the bread dough, allowing the yeast
to rise, rest, then rise again ready to shape and score
with the slightest touch, baking into a glorious loaf,
beautiful, and almost perfect.

The passing of everything is in its own time.
Decades and centuries of clouds forming,
moving with the winds across oceans,
evolving, changing patterns, relaxing above the earth
over the boulangerie in Paris where the young woman
once again awakens to the aroma of freshly baked bread.

All things are simply on their way to someplace else.