The Bait

Take and plant this seed. Be patient,
soon we’ll eat. For now,
give it to darkness. Same place all else
grows rotten. And see this seed will grow.
But change is not soon stopping. With water,
sunlight, and timing, this seed soon will be vining.
Then take and eat these beans.
Months ago you held as seeds.
Think how we had nothing,
we still planted the seed.

Now deep inside yourself,
highest on the shelf,
buried in soil spelled soul.
Look hard within your self, and know.
You were once this seed. Seeds still there
inside you. The bitter and tooth-breaking.
Least sweet, and least worth tasting.

Here comes the farmer now.
One who respells soil soul.
The one who gathers seeds.
Not food or fruit, seeds alone.
Be bitter, or be sweet.
We are not judged by how we taste.
But instead by what we wasted,
because we never tasted.
Sweetness isn’t the destination.
It was only ever the bait.

That Germ

When you plant a seed, nothing happens. When it comes time for that end of the year test, one of the questions is what happens when you plant a seed, nothing is the correct answer.

Except, it isn’t. Every farmer knows what work patience does that they can’t. Now if only we followed farmers as often as political science majors. We’d think on timelines, we’d question our initial bias, we’d work with systems far more powerful than we will ever be, more powerful than any machine. Still, nothing like a seed.

You want to talk about life after death? You want to talk about transfiguration, or transubstantiation. Don’t talk to me. Talk to a tomato seed. Barely a little flaky kernel to the naked eye. Unending possibility, fruit, food, and life to the earth. But if you sat in a classroom and studied it, you’d think nothing of it. If you had never planted one in a well-destroyed field, and come back to it, for no reason other than sheer, titanic, monumental faith, you would pass the test. You would select the option ‘nothing’. And you would fit in so fine with humankind, and live in constant conflict with the planet.

What is truth? Better question. What is truth without patience?
If only I knew. I’d do just one thing with that germ.

I’d share it.
With you.