Are you willing to receive the world,
through the buttery comfort
of a baked Japanese sweet potato?
If you do,
imagine it’s starch,
entering through your mouth,
jamming itself into your teeth,
going down your esophagus,
and lodging itself inside your stomach.
Burrowed underneath your organ skin,
the sweet potato remembers being
a hatchling underground.
Now, detach from yourself,
become a fairy, tiny and ethereal,
and swim into your bodily furnace,
where starch and fat slowly seep
from 400 degrees Fahrenheit
for 60 minutes
with a hint of
rosemary and thyme.
Your tiny self observes the heat,
which brings destruction,
which provides nourishment,
which releases heat.
The heat breaks
the shape,
erodes the structure,
melts the mush,
and its earthy nutrients
become the skin underneath
your nails, digging the ground,
excavating the tubers, pulling
golden life from the moist ground,
ground that’s full of air and water,
like the pine mountains in winter.
In that timeless space,
between the moon falling asleep
and the sun waking up,
in that timeless space, between
your hands digging towards the sky,
and a rock greeting your hand.
Your body,
like an eagle in free fall,
suspended,
by your limbs,
by the mountain
and by faith,
and how often
are we held by faith
and we don’t even know it?
How often do we live,
hoping, that we will be held
by the next moment?
How often do we walk
and we assume the ground
won’t crumble underneath of us,
in the same way
we assume the buttery and
now salted sweet potato
will keep us alive,
instead of imploding,
instead of digging trenches,
shattering our guts and bones...
Instead,
we hold faith with our hands
while hoping our skin will remain
attached to our flesh and muscles,
as it receives and explores
the outside world,
like the rocks you climb,
like the dirt you tend to,
like the sweet potato
you bring to your mouth,
like hands that join in prayer
while your mouth says,
thank you for this meal.
Don’t you ever forget,
the skin that touches the world
is dead like winter.
Comments