Ivan Head: Two Poems

Potato Sermon

Every day

I walk past my potatoes.

I go by

a little earlier

or a little later.

Their humble leaf

helps me

think of

lack of hubris

while I ponder hidden tubers.

And

down below

the humus

awaits

the Harvest Festival.

Ivan Head

A Prior Potato Sermon

The churchyard wall

by the copse

divides two crops

into potatoes one side

corpses the other.

One day there will be

a clearer distinction between the two,

a difference in lumpish density

as Aquinas put it

long before the potato reached Europe.

One will still be food for frying.

The other,

though tangible,

may become

bright, clear, radiant, agile and undying.

Most of the time

I think I would prefer

to be harvested by an angel,

but for now I really feel like a chip.

Ivan Head