Orion Rising

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April 8, 2005

Faith in a Seed

Wednesday evening, while Orion was out on a walk with Jen and Pika (Orion, at not quite four months, was not doing much of the walking, of course), I went out with Pemi to the school farm across the road. In the stillness of sunset, I lay out on one of the boulders that had been too large to move with a team of horses or oxen and now stood as an island in a cascade of light, capturing from its vantage both sunrise and sunset each day. A light green tapestry of lichen did little to soften the hard granite cushion I used for my brief reverie. Pemi's excitement at being outside in the warm field roused me after only a short while, and we set off down toward the newly dug beds of the farm on our appointed task.

Across the small orchard where I had posted "Goodbye and Keep Cold" during a warm spell this winter, I added Frost's "Putting in the Seed":

You come to fetch me from my work to-night
When supper’s on the table, and we’ll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree.
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mingled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea;)
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth.
How Love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Walking by the moist, dark cakes of freshly dug soil and delicate green shoots burrowing upward toward the sun inside their cold-frames, I couldn't help but think of this poem, and of Thoreau's essay, "The Dispersion of Seeds." And although the farm's seedlings need a bit more help getting along than Thoreau's self-propagating pines, the faith -- almost a suspension of disbelief -- required to accept that a world of green will soon rise from a handful of hard, dry seeds sprinkled haphazardly in the slowly warming soil is considerable.

For me, it takes a similar faith that all that I do for my son in these early months will have some lasting effect on him as he grows. Already he has begun to show us a distinct character -- his often contagious ebullience making his father smile and laugh much more than he is used to, and his inquisitive wide eyes making everyone long for his sense of wonder. Will all the play, the warm moments in the rocking chair, the poems we read together (Tess Gallagher most recently) somehow blossom from what we think is careful nurturing? I can only have faith that the seeds we plant will sprout and reach heavenward, like seedlings that limn the contours of their parent, long-since decayed and itself part of the fertile, nurturing soil.

Posted by pavel at April 8, 2005 9:43 AM

Comments

Posted by: Julie at April 8, 2005 4:21 PM

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