Dianne Stepp: “Harvest”
HARVEST
xxxxxSomeday I know I’ll have
to give it up. That even with a stick
I won’t be able to pry myself off
my knees. But today I’m harvesting
potatoes with my husband. We rip out
the rotted vines, chickweed, cheatgrass
that took advantage while we dozed.
Kneel to push our blue-gloved hands
into mounds we seeded last spring,
and out they pop, brand new in tight
burgundy skins. Sometimes I wonder
if we have cheated, sneaking in one
more season. That we should whisper,
duck our heads, not whoop like a couple
of kids, holding up the big ones.
Dianne Stepp has had poems appear in Comstock Review, The Oregonian, Tar River Poetry, Naugatuck River Review, Cider Press Review, Sugar House Review, and Glassworks, as well as other journals and anthologies. She has published three chapbooks: Half-Moon of Clay, Sweet Mercies, and The Nest’s Dark Eye.