Digging Potatoes

The digging fork can’t find them but for weeds
advertising the stirred-up planting mound
they’d sunk in after we had worked the ground,
beating its mudcakes soft as sugar.  Seeds
we sliced from last year’s leavings as they sprouted
crippled little buds with see-through shoots,
drilled among the compost clods as roots
and stems, some down, some up.  We doubted
still the sureness of our yield,
overplanting, knowing some would rot,
only vaguely wishing some would not
as the stubborn muck turned weedflower field.
Now with baskets full we only wonder
at work of rounded shoulders over, under.

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