I bought a dollar and a half's worth of small red potatoes, br took them home, boiled them in their jackets br and ate them for dinner with a little butter and salt. br Then I walked through the dried fields br on the edge of town. In middle June the light br hung on in the dark furrows at my feet, br and in the mountain oaks overhead the birds br were gathering for the night, the jays and mockers br squawking back and forth, the finches still darting br into the dusty light. The woman who sold me br the potatoes was from Poland; she was someone br out of my childhood in a pink spangled sweater and sunglasses br praising the perfection of all her fruits and vegetables br at the road-side stand and urging me to taste br even the pale, raw sweet corn trucked all the way, br she swore, from New Jersey. "Eat, eat" she said, br "Even if you don't I'll say you did." br Some things br you know all your life. They are so simple and true br they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme, br they must be laid on the table beside the salt shaker, br the glass of water, the absence of light gathering br in the shadows of picture frames, they must be br naked and alone, they must stand for themselves. br My friend Henri and I arrived at this together in 1965 br before I went away, before he began to kill himself, br and the two of us to betray our love. Can you taste br what I'm saying? It is onions or potatoes, a pinch br of simple salt, the wealth of melting butter, it is obvious, br it stays in the back of your throat like a truth br you never uttered because the time was always wrong, br it stays there for the rest of your life, unspoken, br made of that dirt we call earth, the metal we call salt, br in a form we have no words for, and you live on it.