Cellar door,
Planking skywater djembe
punctuated grunts of trolls or
some other subterranean earthworker,
hunched and hatcheting we sang along, stoking intermittently
Cellar door,
Two cords not one
hucked bric-a-brac through the portal to preposterous worlds they would warm a winter
here
for us
aching glad shoulders and thighs
for I am my mother's strong right arm
not a mere hand, directed, without agency
but freckling and skinny
and power enough to twick a tree rope to ground
or whirl dervish-dirt a mudhole
of toes' making
so that when she is beat and retreats, saying
All we need to do now is stack
I can go on thumping a miner's chorus
"Hardwood for long burning".
Until dissuaded by the eloquence of splinters and spiders
and convinced the notion is my spontaneous creation
clawing potatoes like birdshot from the raw red weals of furrow
I thank God for new potatoes and
that He granted me this morning,
when I woke with no junebugs in my hair
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