Yam
The potato that ate all its carrots,
can see in the dark like a mole,
its eyes the scars
from centuries of shovels, tines.
May spelled backwards
because it hates the light,
pawing its way, padding along,
there in the catacombs.
Notes
Where Mary Oliver’s Lilies looked up to the gleaming, sunlit surface of open water to find spiritual abundance, Bruce Guernsey’s Yam burrows deep underground into the dark, scarred catacombs of the soil. The blind, subterranean root gnarled with centuries of shovel marks and fattened on hidden earth reveals the heavy, silent labor of nourishment, proving that survival and sustenance are often cultivated away from the blinding light in the quiet resilience of the dark. It anchors August’s theme of Feast in the raw, earthen underbelly of the harvest, reminding us that the table of life is rooted not only in sweet, open blossoms, but in the stubborn, subterranean grit that pads silently beneath our feet. #poetry #bruceguernsey #feast #august #yam
Poem copyright ©2008 by Bruce Guernsey.