When your peeling potatoes with your ma
Always pick the small ones
Sitting on the floor
You don’t know who will come in through the door
Starts as usual ‘anybody seen my potato knife?
yes, Ned had it fixing his bike.
That was last week
Get that bike out of the hall...
Her uniform striped overall and little booted slippers
A yellow basin of water
newspaper spread to catch the skins
A potato as big as your hand
No put that back get a smaller one
Sore little fingers use a blunt knife.
While the coveted potato knife speeds
With ferocious dexterity
one long peel after another.
Get the eyes, the eyes need weeded out.
it’s never going to end
Then at last, pots and pots of potato ready to boil
Remember her amazing fingers with the broken nail
Her telling how the bobbin in the mill caught the child’s hand.
Then the burning
listening to the hissing sizzle and steaming whistle as the skins crackle and spark
piled high in the open fire.
It’s over
But it will be spuds again tomorrow.
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