For Courtney after a 12,000-year-old prairie remnant was sprayed with herbicide
The seeds can’t be bought, tossed, and churned
back into a prairie that loves, that needs the fire,
the rain hard in the middle of the day even if
it’s too much already, the full freeze at night,
the searing heat that feeds the flowers.
The seeds are their own hard-shelled genius,
impossible to crack into easy markets and quick fixes,
but they’re all in when it comes to seasonal jolts,
massive forces of time, light, drought, tunneling
voles, brumating ornate box turtles, buried beetles.
The seeds are fire-proofed, more stubborn
than the pyramids built so far across time
and storms when the seeds were already old,
migrating across land that is itself migrating.
The seeds have seen it all without having
to grow eyes. They’ve germinated in a music
only the dirt remembers, broken themselves
and the earth enough to unfurl into big wind
and little enough moisture, winding upward,
pulled out of their dark coffins by the sun,
itself a seed. The seeds know how this works,
maybe even what will become of the starlings
murmurating into the future, the bees
right now searching and dying for what
the seeds would have given them.
This is not something you can fully understand.
This is not a house you can rebuild after a tornado.
This is what we repair our lives for and pass on,
an infinity we can only hope to orbit.
So ask the ghosts of these seeds who they are
your whole life. Note the absence of blue pinnacles
of blossom, and yellow flowers bearing seedheads
all the way down to where the seeds wait.
Speak what has always been seeded in your DNA,
which is also your heart. Plant your heart here so the earth
can break it open and grow it bigger for the seeds.
—
Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, Ph.D., 2009-13 Kansas Poet Laureate, is the author of 24 books, including How Time Moves: New & Selected Poems and The Sky Begins At Your Feet: A Memoir on Cancer, Community, and Coming Home to the Body. Founder of Transformative Language Arts, she offers writing workshops, coaching, and collaborations. Her poetry has been widely published, including in Terrain, Poets & Writers, Negative Capability, Two Rivers, New Territory, New Letters, and other journals.
