Sweet Potato God

"A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit, and a violin,"
said the frizzly physicist,
"what else does a man need to be happy?"
A source of warmth. Chocolate cake.
And what about books? what about sheet music?
Some of us don't have the knack of traveling light.
Asked to outfit a paradise,
I'd begin with breads and books and dogs
and lie awake thinking, What if I start to miss maple trees
and their spinny seeds? wet garden hoses?
the smell of frying onions?
and in the end, I'd take the world along.
What would you leave out? Gravity?
No more broken hips or skinned knees
and look at us, we're flying -- but
our hearts are weaker, our bones dissolving.
Mosquitoes? The bats are faint with hunger.
Feed them your favorite butterflies,
or the mango, unpollinated, will go extinct.
I'm not finished packing, I'm adding the zinnias
Allan brought in a jelly jar.
Bowed by Hurricane Isabel,
their stems curved out of the mud in loops and elbows,
raising pink purple red orange Einstein heads.
I want a chunk of iolite, a mineral 
colorless or blue, depending
on how you view it; a piece of honeycomb,
likewise plain or intricate; a pairing knife;
rosin for the violin bow.
And a sweet potato god -- a plain rock
the size of a healthy tuber,
with dents for a face. At the proper time,
in fertile soil, Old Polynesians
buried him with the planting,
buried a prayer for the growing season, acknowledgement
that more than what we need is necessary.