President of the Potatoes

He preferred the red, white and blue cars
than the same colors draped on the caskets
of men cornered in the wrong field
cut like corn that's not ready for harvest.
The wide plain never recalled such friends;
he held no power over such a landscape.
Of the 45 who tried to solve a confounding riddle
one went back after wrestling a river.

And so he made certain that the distance
from the tarmac to the factory was that far
that when more and more questions were asked
he'd be scant and pretty much preoccupied.
But when the flood of inquiries touched the tip
of his earlobe, he'd have his remarks
readily scripted, "I'm bereft of details.
I wasn't informed on time. 
I just woke up."

Now some bird's wing got caught in the branches
and some part of the archipelago can still keep its secrets.
And we, his purported masters, were treated like root crops
yellow spirits dimming within our skins so brown
buried and confined like potatoes in the dark
waiting for truth's hands to harvest us into illumination.