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The kingdom of heaven is
the prehistoric Quechuan kneeling down to pluck
papas from cold soil on thin-aired cliffs of cloudless,
treeless Atacama. An odd place indeed to venture
to feed millions across generations, but sometimes
nourishment springs up along toxic arms.
First, carefully weed bitter green leaves away
from indigo skin and the soft yellow within, then,
quietly inherit a harsh corner of the earth.
Millennia later, conquistadores will be taken aback
by these tubers, deadly nightshade cousins,
mistrusted at first, but eventually shipped
transatlantic as anti-scurvy for vitamin-deprived
sailors, anti-starvation for the starving.
The kingdom of heaven is
the shrewd Frenchman who wisely fooled skeptics
by planting and then placing watch over his fields,
then suddenly ordering his guards home—hoping
curious onlookers would raid the moonlit rows,
claiming the pomme de terre, earth apple,
as their own. And so they did.
The kingdom of heaven is
the impoverished Irish whose old and young both
thrived on the práta until its tragic blight, and despite
the Great Hunger that carried many to their deaths
and others, across the ocean from whence their beloved
plant had first come, they never gave up cultivating,
persevering to pick and to peel and to boil and
to mash and to trust in its power
to end the famine.
The kingdom of heaven is
the Yiddish-speakers, death oven refugees,
survivors who shredded and pressed the kartófl
into latkes, frying them in hot oil every bitter cold
winter to remind themselves of the great mystery
of who they were and their strange but true
connection to a realm of a strange but true
God, who remains always and very much
alive.
Karen Bradley
4/06 |
