POETRY FRIDAY: The Christmas Babka

One of my favorite childhood memories is of the time my mother and I drove over to her parents’ house one December night before Christmas. Babci, my grandmother, had taken a big pan of her homemade babka out of the oven just before we had arrived. She sliced a big hunk of the sweet bread for us to take home. My mother and I devoured half of it in the car. It was still warm and soooo delicious!


Here is a poem I wrote more than a dozen years ago about my Babci making her famous babka:


THE CHRISTMAS BABKA
by Elaine Magliaro

We watch Babci make the Christmas babka.

With plump peasant hands

she kneads sweet dough

on the white porcelain-topped table,

places it in a large sky-blue bowl,

covers it with a damp towel,

and sets it on the kitchen counter

near the hissing radiator.


Swelling with bubbles of air,

the dough rises into a pale yellow cloud

flecked with bits of orange rind.


The baking babka fills the house

with the scent of Christmas.


We eat the bread fresh from the oven,

its insides steaming and golden—

a homemade treasure

rich enough to warm a winter night.

I hope you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

At Wild Rose Reader, I have another Christmas memoir poem titled Remember.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is over at A Year of Reading.