Add Water

A poem

Add Water

A seed;

inanimate matter.

Store it in the right conditions

and don’t disrupt its pristine nature;

forget about it for tens of years in a box

on the shelf of your bedroom dresser.

The one made with cedar wood –

indicated by its strain patterns

and sporting a mahogany stain finish.

—

I can almost smell it –

the stain not the seed.

By now the seed is a simple bead

sitting in its cloth and

dashed with black jagged stripes on a round brown canvas.

But take this seed to soil (or even a napkin) and

just add water; the hitherto life reveals a complex process

that was on the brink of a becoming the whole time.

A unique synthesis of the inanimate

waiting to fall into the conditions that would fulfil its potential.

It combines the material of what it is with what it can become –

all naturally.

Chemically?

—

…to think some can’t reconcile life with the nonliving…

- April 5^th, 2017

Picture from Swallow Falls Park in Maryland.