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.