A Famine Scene Remembered

 

November, month of charcoal cloud

slung low to the earth;

labourers hunched double,

grubbing for the bright potatoes

that scuttle, like mice, back into the sodden soil.  

Scrabbling fingers chase each fugitive light

 with the desperation of the starving. 

I rest a moment on the spade,

my fingers on the shaft  

now rough with working the same soil;

my fingers with their DNA inside them.