June 14: A Poem, Rick Barot, "Child Holding Potato"

I do have a poem for you today.  This poem is by a poet named Rick Barot.  It's a stunner, originally published in the magazine Memorious and republished in The Best American Poetry 2012.

It just spoke to me today for some reason.  It could be because my sister is having surgery today.  It could be because of the Madonna and Child and saints imagery.

Or maybe Saint Marty's just hungry for a baked potato.

Child Holding Potato

When my sister got her diagnosis,
I bought an airplane ticket

but to another city, where I stared
at paintings that seemed victorious

in their relation to time:
the beech from two hundred years ago,

its trunk a palette of mud
and gilt; the man with olive-black

gloves, the sky behind him
a glacier of blue light.  In their calm

landscapes, the saints.  Still dripping
the garden's dew, the bouquets.

Holding the rough gold orb
of a potato, the Child cradled

by the glowing Madonna.  Then,
the paintings I looked at the longest:

the bowls of plums and peaches,
the lemons, the pomegranates

like red earths.  In my mouth,
the raw starch.  In my mouth, the dirt.

This is the closest I could come to Madonna, Child, and Potato