An aging gardener searches a dry, weedy bed for the potato crop she planted as carefully as she has for fifty years. The heat has browned the corn, the earth seems unable to hold water, and gophers have moved in. What she finally uncovers is disappointing: small, hollow, cracked, or green potatoes. Her mood is less anger than tired acceptance. She has watered, weeded, and fought pests, yet the land still gives less. Even so, she doesn’t despair. She decides to stretch meals with barley and dandelion, telling herself the earth never gave everything even in better years. The poem’s tone is quiet, stubborn, and a little mournful—a record of diminishing returns met with patience and the resolve to keep working with what remains.
Where Are the Potatoes — Summary
Where are the potatoes, she wondered, watching Heat shimmer across her corn block, its leaves Each rustling against other, turning brown. Right here they were planted, next bed over, Evenly spaced, in two long lines, eyes up And covered in soft soil, mixed with compost -- Really exactly as she had done these fifty years.
Early next morning, she reached for her mason's hammer, The experiment with the spud hook having failed, and Heaving her old bones down onto her gardening stool Exactly at the end of that mysterious weedy bed; Pulled block after block of solid hexagonal clod Over, busting up each as she went, feeling for That coolness she knew as round starch balls All her life she'd depended on. It's not That she hadn't watered and weeded, no, Or fought those gophers well, newly arrived. Earth could not drink for once, it seemed.
Some spuds appeared. They were even Smaller than those from last year. Some felt Hollow. Some were cracked. Some were Even green with poisons though they'd grown Well deep enough never to have seen sun.
Oh, well, she thought, I'll take what I can get; Now we'll have barley for every other soup, with Dandelion to help stretch out my kale. This Earth, she told herself, never did all, Really even in days of rain. Barley I bought. Ere I go forth from here as buried flesh or ash, I'll Do as I have done: work with what is.