"Thoreau's Beans"
Here's the human that exists,
his hunger grasping how to cultivate,
then gorge, and now he wakes
inside the dead-mule smell
of lilac around his cottage,
and now he wrestles with roots
in the sun, struggling,
as a husband, with the harness,
and while lancing blisters
he remembers the view
from Ktaadn, how a cloud soaked
him on its upper slope—no brother
but the self, and he returns,
meek among the asphodel,
even more determined
that his crop will thrive,
becoming almost desperate
for long pails of water
while beneath him is what
he summons: brute feet,
his hands smelling like leeks—
in a notebook this is his thrift
and estate: the stems
weakened until he finds them
cow chips, which he must
have felt for in the dark
but never wrote about stealing
David Roderick lives in Greensboro, N.C. He is the author of Blue Colonial.
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