Potato Mountain

Potato Mountain I will arrive an habitual escapee from the rabbit warrens of central planners By ferreting north in search of breaks in the maze rifts in the grid I will follow a stream beside the climbing track and yet higher To a saddle below the great ridge southward along eastern slopes To a fine summit of long vistas and white gravel-skirts exposed to sun Exposed to eyes sweeping round the slow wide circle of arcs in passage Years to degree degree to century century to millennia beyond human sight And my own frail footsteps in iron soil blown to oblivion by winds now shadowing My identical track passed beehives thickets and copse up the potato To a summit of concrete pylon red dirt and folk art Where unknown infidels posed the creative issue of their anonymous fancy In the form of starch-fat tubers affixed with parasols to shade them And toothpicks to give them arms and bay leaves to make them hair Hats to render them style atop bald and oblong pates of brown Wings of sumac leaf sleek and waxy to impart mottled skins flights of fancy But they cannot fly like chaparral birds fitted to wind and wildness Unmoving the potatoes await their fate on a flat stage above the world Three days pass their number reduced in gathering erosions and mathematical decline Four days the mule deer has found them yet still proud potatoes Pass from deer to lion to slow beetles upon the soil And there the once magnificent and well-arrayed vegetable host Submits bravely to mechanical escorts in the brief free fall to worlds below