A Poem by Amy Nawrocki The Gift of Soap On Christmas mornings after mom died, when the tree cut from Miss Swift’s lot took too much effort to put up,   Dad’s best effort at gift giving would accompany our regular traditions of Christmas Eve pierogis, the good china, and Johnny Mathis playing on the tape recorder. My father would bundle packages in paper grocery bags fastened not with gold ribbons, green or red bows, but staples and sometimes rubber bands— the yearly stock-up of soft-smelling, fragrant bars of soap, too many to count. Twelve, sometimes twenty-four bars— bought in bulk from the warehouse, all for letting us go and be clean in this world. For a single father raising five kids, there’s always something needing to be washed away: dirt, odor, even grief.
	Amy Nawrocki is a professor of English at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut and has poetry published at various places, including The Lucid Stone, Poetry Magazine, Loch Raven Review, Ribbons, The Midday Moon, and Connecticut River Review.
			Summer 2006 Issue