The Potato Paean

Suma Narayan
Tea with Mother Nature
2 min readFeb 20, 2023

My Version (Vision?) of Valentine

Photo by blackieshoot on Unsplash

Some people have a problem
With potatoes,
Its true
But as for me,
The livelong day,
I could eat them
Parts and whole!

What do I say of the potato
That tuber of delight?
In hashbrowns, soups and stews,
And curries and condiments, too!

They make me smile,
Do potatoes
I don’t go by their looks:
For big and small,
Or Medium-sized,
They touch my heart,
They do!

So in chipper chips
And gravy boats
Or garnished over fish,
They tell my heart,
Throughout the day
That there’s joy in life
…and food!

My ‘heart aches
and a drowsy numbness
Pains my senses’
Hearing the potato, reviled
Some even go a step further,
Denominating it, too!

’Tis fat, they say
You put on weight,
And what about the f**t?
You can’t have your figure,
And potato, both,
You need to make the choice!

Well, I have,
And I loyally stick
To my version of
The truth:
Give me a life
With potatoes,
Or don’t give me a life
At all!

2023 Suma Narayan. All Rights Reserved.

This is very late response to a prompt by Dr. Preeti Singh, about the joy vegetables bring:

Shout out to Harris Sockel for this brilliant, angst-ridden piece of beauty:

Shoutout, too, to this extremely well-researched story about peppers, potatoes and tomatoes, written by R. Philip Bouchard:

Shoutout, too, to Rita Wilhelm, and her spirited defence of the potato:

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Suma Narayan
Tea with Mother Nature

Loves people, cats and tea: believes humanity is good by default, and that all prayer works. Also writes books. Support me at: https://ko-fi.com/sumanarayan1160