bread and salt

The title of this poem come from a scene that intrigued me in a thoughtful sci-fi movie, The Final Cut, starring Robin Williams. Williams plays a despised man who works as a cutter, editing the film of people's lives. The film he edits is garnered from an implant placed in a baby and harvested after death. In a very poignant scene, the cutter tells of the legend: after a death, the loved ones would place on the dead coins on the eyes, bread and salt on the chest; the sin eater would eat a dead person's sins to ensure he would be received into heaven, then take the bread and salt and coins as payment. I believe I have heard of a sin eater somewhere else; it seems very primitive and necessary, but as the response in the movie puts it: what happens to the sin eater?

Bread and salt have always appealed to me as primal elements of life, just as for some religions, bread and wine are primal elements of their religious observance. When I have made bread, I always liked my bread better than store bread, partly because it was doughier, but also because I made it saltier.

In "bread and salt", I dig into primal elements of wresting life from the earth, and celebrating with bread and salt.

Feb 3: I have added another poem called "bread and salt and copper — the sin eater", about the death of an imaginary Italian merchant.