A Potato's Eyes

Came across these words I wrote a few years ago.

The potato is alive.
It is ugliest of all -
But those roots interest me
Ugly, brown, dead and still
With a dark shadow underneath
A shadow of trowels and famines and rock
And tendrils of pink ribbon pigtails
From long ago

It was part of a writing "still life," which included these random associations:

Bubble, bubble, toil and potatoes. Potatoes whose eyes are in their roots. Crayons whose spoons are in their handles. A tail of purple yarn, uncurled apart from the body, the way a cat sits on haunches and drums a little, thinking. 64 64 and Kit Kats, and a little test tube top, something you expect to bubble with liquid in a laboratory - something green. Laboratory sounds like lavatory, and as a child I got them mixed up.

I don't remember all that I was describing. I'd made a little pile of objects in the center of the table, and all the Wildfire writers had contributed. An odd assortment like this shakes your brain free. As with any freewriting, the goal is to write without stopping, journeying into the present moment. Mistakes don't matter. Digressions are not transgressions. Freewriting is practice writing: do it often. You never know what will take place before your eyes.