My grandad dug potatoes for a living
long ago in Australia when he was young,
chiselling them out of the hard-baked soil
then leaving the field each day exhausted
with his back bent as low as the landscape;
resilient and adaptable
like the generations before him,
humble but proud like the potato itself.
A tour guide on the famine ship in Dublin
told us the Irish were known to be tall
because of all the potatoes they ate.
I, six foot three, said: we are and we do.
Published in Tattie Zine
S.C. Flynn 