The plant lifts easily now, like an old tooth.
I can free it from the rows of low hills,
hills like the barrows of old kings
where months ago, before anything grew or
was,
we hid the far-sighted eyes of potatoes.
They fingered forth, blossomed, and shrank,
and did their dark business under our feet.
And now it’s all over. Horse nettles dangle
their gold berries. Sunflowers, kindly giants
in their death-rattle turn stiff as streetlamps.
Pale cucumbers swell to alabaster lungs,
while marigolds caught in the quick frost
go brown, and the scarred ears of corn
gnawed
by the deer lie scattered like primitive fish.
The life boats lifted by milkweed ride light
and empty, their sailors flying.
This is the spot. I put down my spade,
I dig in, I uncover the scraped knees
of children in the village of potatoes,
and the bald heads of their grandfathers.
I enter the potato mines.