On a make shift skid, outside a food pantry, below
a loose-leaf sign, inserted in the drainpipe, dented
Free Potatoes!
Loose red and hard like stray stone bandits escaped from torn holes,
Dozens of 10-pound sacks knee high wait for local passers by to carry off amid
gathering music of Caribbean speech, mixes with approaching squeaking shopping carts.
When younger, it would not have been beneath mothers and daughters
for justly taken potatoes satiate an Irish sense of waste
During the strike, principles meant more than money.
In similar summer afternoons, fathers and sons found and stacked scrap metal
newspaper to recycle, driven to the dump to be paid by the pound.
We proud poor refused paying rent with food stamps and green cards.
We would have taken free potatoes.
Recalling our eyes and roots in hungry mornings, they are gone.