How to stay at this desk when the sun is barefooting cartwheels over the grass—
How to step carefully on the path that pulls for the fleet unfettered gait of a deer—
How to go home when the wood thrush is promising the drunk liquid bliss of dusk—
How to resist the kiss, the body forbidden that plucks the long vibrating string of want—
How to drink water when there is wine—
Once I knew all these brick-shaped things, took them for the currency of survival.
Now I have lived long and I know better.
Begin on the day you decide you are fit to carry on. Begin with a quailing heart for here you stand on the fault line. Begin if you can at the beginning. Begin with your mother, with her grandfather, the ones before him. Think of their hands, all of them: firm on the plow, the cradle, the rifle butt, the razor strop; trembling on the telegram, the cheek of a lover, the fact of a door. Everything that can wreck a life has been done before, done to you, even. That’s all inside you now. Half of it you won’t think of. The rest you wouldn’t dream of. Go on.
Dig them after the first light frost. Lay them down in a shallow tray like cordwood, like orphans in a dresser drawer. Cover them with damp towels. Bring up the heat. In a closet or spare room, you’ll want it hotter than the worst summer day you remember and that humid. A week of this will thicken their skins, make them last for months in your cellar, and turn all their starch to sugar.
Bear in mind this is not a cure for anything that was wrong with the sweet potato that meant to be starchy, thanks, the better to weather a winter in cold clay, then lean on its toes and throw out reckless tendrils into one more spring.
Bear in mind also the ways that you were once induced to last through the sermon, the meal, the insufferable adult conversation, all the times you wanted to be starchy but were made to be sweet.
Recall this surrender when you sit down to eat them. Consider the direction of your grace.