motherhood & potatoes

[purplejacket]

motherhood & potatoes

over rows of ripe swiss chard
with a potato in each plump hand
Jeremiah waddles toward the basket.
they tumble from his slow release
and he turns to you making a dirt cloud
against his Oshkosh bib.
you rub your belly and by implication
the one inside

three will be enough.

your focus returns to the unearthing -
two more dusty tubers. he says gank-you
like a bird and bounces back to the basket.
a curio on the ground, he pincers it
blindly against the sun
and his cherub hair whiffles
in beams of love.

[Jonathan Morey Weiss-Namaste47]

You create a scene of fertility pj--nicely painted and very imaginable. Enjoyed it.

[mfwilkie]

Love the warm tone and easy flow of this, piper.

Some thoughts:

your focus returns to the unearthing -
two more dusty tubers. he says gank-you
like a bird and bounces back to the basket.
a curio on the ground - he pincers it blindly
against the sun, his cherub hair whiffles
in beams of love.

Maggie

[MichaelFirewalker]

agree with Jon, pj----the spirit of this is wonderfully inspirational----you have drawn for us a circle, a cycle of being, of birth turning life through space and time, keeping it in motion with all of its parts, the mother, the child, and the unborn, all turning on the mother who is Earth, while she turns her life around the sun...simply lovely...

michael

[johnnysaturn]

This is exceptional, pretty well pitch perfect to my ear.The intervention of
"three will be enough" is for me the highlight.
This from a man with a lifelong aversion to babies (their only redeeming feature being that eventually they turn into charming and life-enhancing adults)

[LynnDoiron]

pj -- I agree with all praise in re: this poem. Like it a lot. The nits picked below are eensy bits for you to consider or ignore:

over rows of [*unpicked] swiss chard
Jeremiah waddles toward the basket(,)
with a potato in each [*plump] hand.
they tumble from his slow release
and he re turns to you making a dirt cloud
against the front of his Oshkosh bib.
you rub your belly and by implication
the one inside

three will be enough. [love, love]

your focus returns to the unearthing -
two more dusty tubers. he says gank-you
like a bird and bounces back to the basket.
a curio on the ground - he pincers it blindly
against the sun, and his cherub hair whiffles
on the beams of your love.

[*unpicked -- with rows, unpicked seems unnecessary; for rhythmic pruposes, perhaps some other modifier?]
[*plump -- if you were to delete "with" as suggested, then maybe a multi-syllabled word here to replace plump, like "dimpled" or similar . . .?]

that's all. fine work. love busheled up in those rows.

[mfwilkie]

Came back to read this fine piece again, pj, and I agree with johnny and lynn re:three will be enough.

Nice work.

Maggie

[purplejacket]

I considered the suggestions, and played with it a bit. Thanks for all the sweet things you've said. I'm pretty happy with this one. A keeper.