Feb 2017
I inter this one along with his brothers and sisters,
All of them dead, wrinkled, dry, and spent--
Then cover their husks with earth
And wait.
Next Wednesday, here they resurrect in bodies
Nothing like the ones I laid to rest.
But greening life unfurling over that same ground that smothered them
Last week.
Where is the seed? I wonder, and digging shows that
It has been consumed by what it started.
Now verdant growth delineates its forgotten
Shallow grave.
And for some time I don’t recall the humble start
To which my viridescent vine’s indebted.
‘Til autumn, when the flower’s passed and pods can shell out in
My hand.
There, held in dusty palm I meet the progeny of
Last spring’s burial--
How like their father, and how many! Separated by that living vegetable
And time.
“The Seed is the Word” I know. I see it happen
As it plants itself in my soul’s garden patch.
Just words on wrinkled paper, ancient script seems long
Since dead.
But something new grows up in that same spot,
Some living thing that I had not expected
That seems not myself or what had grown there
Before.
It’s not the seed, but somehow hearkens back to my ingestion of
The pages in that dusty tome.
And I forget the exact words that sank into my being until
One day,
When an accusation flies my way--though wrongly hurled
By one who should have loved me.
And my response, unexpected, is not my practiced
Comeback.
What is my deal? I wonder. Where’s the anger and vexation
I should feel right now? Why the
Peace I can’t quite understand, and the total lack
Of pique?
Then I see them in my soul, breaking from the pods, thirty, sixty, and
A hundred: “Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing
Shall offend them.” “ Blessed are ye, when men . . .
Revile you.”
The seed I found in age-old text--now separated by the verdure growing
In my spirit, lush and full--is now
Mature and bearing fruit that looks just like
Its Father.
"But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." Matthew 13:23
All of them dead, wrinkled, dry, and spent--
Then cover their husks with earth
And wait.
Next Wednesday, here they resurrect in bodies
Nothing like the ones I laid to rest.
But greening life unfurling over that same ground that smothered them
Last week.
Where is the seed? I wonder, and digging shows that
It has been consumed by what it started.
Now verdant growth delineates its forgotten
Shallow grave.
And for some time I don’t recall the humble start
To which my viridescent vine’s indebted.
‘Til autumn, when the flower’s passed and pods can shell out in
My hand.
There, held in dusty palm I meet the progeny of
Last spring’s burial--
How like their father, and how many! Separated by that living vegetable
And time.
“The Seed is the Word” I know. I see it happen
As it plants itself in my soul’s garden patch.
Just words on wrinkled paper, ancient script seems long
Since dead.
But something new grows up in that same spot,
Some living thing that I had not expected
That seems not myself or what had grown there
Before.
It’s not the seed, but somehow hearkens back to my ingestion of
The pages in that dusty tome.
And I forget the exact words that sank into my being until
One day,
When an accusation flies my way--though wrongly hurled
By one who should have loved me.
And my response, unexpected, is not my practiced
Comeback.
What is my deal? I wonder. Where’s the anger and vexation
I should feel right now? Why the
Peace I can’t quite understand, and the total lack
Of pique?
Then I see them in my soul, breaking from the pods, thirty, sixty, and
A hundred: “Great peace have they which love Thy law, and nothing
Shall offend them.” “ Blessed are ye, when men . . .
Revile you.”
The seed I found in age-old text--now separated by the verdure growing
In my spirit, lush and full--is now
Mature and bearing fruit that looks just like
Its Father.
"But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." Matthew 13:23
