PAD Day 5: Emily Dickinson and Yams

So today's two prompts from Poetic Asides and NaPoWriMo seem a bit irreconcilable, but I gave it my best shot.
(1) Write a "vegetable" poem, and
(2) Write a "reconstructed" Emily Dickinson poem: Take an Emily poem, remove all the punctuation (especially all those dashes), turn it into a block of prose, then restructure it - play with the line breaks and even the language, changing or replacing words wherever you want. So what I did was substitute "yam" or "yams" for a number of the nouns in her poem #355, "It was not Death, for I stood up..." and I made some other appropriate word changes as well. I did keep the basic structure of the poem, but the content came out amusing if a little weird.  It won't make the finalists for today's Poem-a-Day Challenge, I'm sure, but it was kind of fun to write. Maybe later I'll try a more "serious" vegetable poem, if that's possible and time permits.

From the Emily Dickinson Cookbook

It was not Yams, for I stood up,

And all the Yams lie down.  

It was not Night, for all the Cooks

Put out their Yams for Noon.

It was not Frost, for on my Flesh

I felt Marshmallows crawl,

Nor Fire, for my Potholders

Could keep an Oven cool.

And yet, it tasted, like them all,

The Yams I have seen Set,

so orderly for Casseroles,

Reminded me: Forget,

As if the Skin was shaven

And peeled off from a Yam,

And could not cook sans Cinnamon,

And ’twas like Midnight, ma'am,

When everything that ticked has stopped

And Yams grow all around,

Or Grisly frosts first Autumn morns

the Sweet-potato ground,

But most like Chaos, yamless, cool

Without a Chance to share

Or even a Report of Yams

To justify Despair.