The farmland is finite and all so pristine
elastical produce all at its disposal
but hourglass luminance shows Miss Christine
provoked by bricklaying mechanic's proposal

an airpark appearance convenient and new
her pliable fuselage fluency bound
an improper downtrodden joke it is too,
a venturesome choreographical sound

Inaccurate memories fill ghostlike fields
the feigned benefactor of stale demolition
the coyote chorus it lies and it yields
to lingering progress fulfilling its mission

I meta potato
too meta potato
tree meta potato
what a meta potato four?

`You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter: `it's very easy to take more than nothing.'

Potato
by:
Cheryl Wheeler
(to the tune of The Mexican Hat Dance)

They're red, they're white, they're brown
They get that way underground
There can't be much to do
So now they have blue ones too

We don't care what thay look like we'll eat them
Any way they can fit on our plate
Every way we can conjure to heat them
We're delighted and think they're just great

(Chorus)
PO ta to po ta to po ta to po
ta to po ta to po ta to po ta
to po ta to po ta to po ta to
po ta to po ta to po ta to

Sometimes we ditch the skin
To eat what it's holding in
Sometimes we'd rather please
Have just the outside with cheese

They have eyes but they do not have faces
I don't know if their feelings get hurt
By just hanging around in dark places
Where that only can stare at the dirt

(Repeat Chorus)

I guess the use is scant
For other parts of the plant
But that which grows in view
Is eating potato too

I imagine them under their acres
Out in Idaho and up in Maine
Maybe wondering if they'll be bakers
Or knishes or latkes or plain

(Repeat Chorus)

Welcome are all earth’s lands, each for its kind;
Welcome are lands of pine and oak;
Welcome are lands of the lemon and fig;
Welcome are lands of gold;
Welcome are lands of wheat and maize—welcome those of the grape;
Welcome are lands of sugar and rice;
Welcome the cotton-lands—welcome those of the white potato and sweet potato;
Welcome are mountains, flats, sands, forests, prairies ...

(Whitman, L of G)

Digging by Seamus Heaney

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; as snug as a gun.

Under my window a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade,
Just like his old man.

My grandfather could cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, digging down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mold, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.