Oh'd to a Goober Pea by Liza Field

A poem of praise about a thing of the earth. A poem that builds beauty out of the wildness of words that are ours.


Pale brown peanut:
Ah, true!
White veins of rivers
mold you in a shape
obscure, odd as earth
how it holds two hands together!

Your sheen is the oiled skin
of a brown man, working.
Your dust, of powdercake dirt;
light within your opaque globe
retains rain in a bloom,
waterfalls and leaves,
the corky gourd of a tree.

Truly, Who finds you
has entered the ball of the Beautiful,
Who stays here, the whole,
one seed of the world.


Published in Mirare, 1995




Take it away.