Poetry by Clare Best

Seed potatoes near the Wash

Slide the barn doors open, breathe in
the starchy musk of last year's swell,
listen to the vivid, teeming silence

Colleen, Orla, Desirée, Verity, Nicola,
racked through winter, floor to ceiling,
layer on layer of earthy stones.

Some days a milky northern sun
squints between roof and corrugated walls;
some nights, as black storms rush the fen,

the keenest seeds open their eyes
in grey electric light, to chit and sprout
for planting on a rising Easter tide.