The Potato Eaters, by Sherry Poff

The Potato Eaters, by Vincent Van Gogh (Netherlands) 1885

The Potato Eaters
  
To those who live in hope--not plenty--the fertile, soft earth yields, 
and sunlight guides their steady feet across the furrowed fields.
 
With hands that reach like roots, they stir the warming ground,
arrange within the quickening seed and over all, a mound.
 
White sprouts come forth and reach above to green in soft bright air
while purpling blooms give out a glow at once alive and fair.
 
At last there comes the harvest day, the meager breaking of the bread.
They pour their drink of bitterness with no sign of care or dread.
 
In the low, dark room they gather, wan faces emitting light
pale and strange as a waning moon on a winter's starry night.
 
Sherry Poff 

Sherry Poff grew up in the hills of West Virginia. She now lives and writes in and around Ooltewah, Tennessee, where she interacts with a large group of students and family members. Sherry holds an MA in Writing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and is a member of the Chattanooga Writers’ Guild.  Her stories and poems have appeared recently in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Stone Poetry Quarterly, and Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel.  Sherry’s short poem “Resurrection” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize.