O god    oh sweet potato
cut by the tiller’s bent tine
where is my hand’s best work?

They raised me    taught me dirt
the truth of giving out
day after glorious day

In the horsetails of wet hay
tossed out upon the earth
steaming under the sun

I saw each strand become itself
and I took for my own 
the complication of tending

one blade at a time
into the fragile light
But oh god    o singular vine

now that they’re old 
and lost on the land
all that I know deceives me

binds my hand
to an errant plow
with ropes of tangled muscadine