“Just a little bit, they only
need to go down an inch,
make a small hole, use your pinkie,
put the seeds in,
gently, gently.”
Elders pass on practice with invocation of earth under fingernails.
It doesn’t matter if the rows are straight
so long as we remember ourselves.
We can spend a day like this, or a life,
let afternoons pass under
shifting light and swollen clouds.
Plants need no permission, only our exhale,
sunbeams, a thin veil of rain.
How many more hopeful acts do we have left?
After a thousand tragedies,
sleepless nights staring up at the rafters,
the ground beneath
is waiting to begin again,
the seeds will still be true.
—
Emilie Lygren is a nonbinary poet and educator whose work is grounded in curiosity and reverence. She’s taught writing in a variety of contexts: classrooms, research stations, graduate programs, parks, libraries, and beyond. Emilie’s first book of poetry, What We Were Born For, won the Blue Light Book award in 2021. Find more of her work and words at emilielygren.com.
