Michael Cadnum is the author of thirty-eight books, including the National Book Award finalist The Book of the Lion.  Several of Cadnum's books have been released as audio books by Audible, and Open Road has published e-book editions of many of his classic thrillers.  His most recent books are Earthquake Murder:  short fiction, and a book of animal poetry titled Kingdom.  A new book of poems, The Promised Rain, is in-progress. He lives in Albany, California.

Follow him on Twitter @MichaelCadnum.

Potato Setting

for Vigdis Storsletten


A string bag of them gives off
the wet smell of earth before anything.
The year is infant, and trees stand
with their naked wood.
Nothing lies down beside nothing.
Even ice is on and off, gone, still here,
thawing, shivering,
I’ll show you—come see. 
The road is one long puddle.

The sun floats up, and stops.
The magpie waits to be two. The sparrow hides

beside the mailbox on its iron post, hedge
nailed together by thorns.
          The house
is one black window. The school is

a blue slate roof. The playground is empty,
and on the field
even the sheep are vanished as she

says nothing, no word, no word,
no word enough and cuts
the world into soil.

Potato Setting first appeared in Commonweal Magazine.