Seeds

Tiny packets of life, these seeds. They seem
invisible in our busy days, and, tossed
by shoes, or cracked by birds, or cast by breeze
among the weeds and stones, they might be lost;
might be scorched, or washed away—or, worse,
bloom in all their grace, and be ignored—
but some of them take root. So words.
They’re particles of thought we pitch toward
a generation we can’t know. Beneath
the snow, beneath the ash, and still for years,
lay a spring antiquity bequeathed
to us. So plant these in your garden, dear,
and tend them, as Lucretius might,
who thought that all we see are seeds of light.

—Timothy Sandefur