Good Friday

My neighbor plants potatoes on Good Friday
and feels himself blessed by tradition.
Plant potatoes, he says on Good Friday
like a man who knows what he is sure of.
It isn’t just weather with him
and seed and black earth, it’s a secret
of life that past farmers have lived by
and he only knows what’s been told him—
let it be superstition, he says,
I get good crops of potatoes.