FOUR POTATOES
Elisavietta Ritchie
They'll poison you, green, Aunt Tanya warns.
Such a waste....Potatoes are all one needs
for a meal, topped with sour cream, dill...
I bought them beige, if pocked and scarred,
from the REDUCED FOR QUICK SALE cart,
did not shade them from treacherous light.
But I grew up with tales of potato famines,
the knowledge that wealth and life can disappear
with a drought, revolution or war, so hoard
those holey clothes, expired tinned fish, rutabagas....
Four dangerous spuds, like stones in a stream green
round their gills, loll weeks in my chipped brown bowl.
Suddenly now the bottom ends (which side is the top?) sprout: tiny rosygreen fingers probe air the way goose-barnacle
tentacles fathom the sea. A miracle born of neglect.
Might these nascent -- roots? tendrils? leaves? -- transmute
into creatures to stalk my yard, or feed the neighborhood....
I seize the cleaver, chop, plant sixteen cubes in my window box.
