The Wisdom of Seeds
You don’t seed a cloud with another cloud,
but with bone dry particles of dust.
Sahara dust blown to the Amazon
makes the mineral-poor soils fertile.
The Amazon seeds its own rains which blown
off course make the Sertão desert bloom.
Hopelessly off course on his voyage to the spice rich Indies
America discovered Columbus – a tragic mistake.
The conquistadors who followed stole the gold
but the seeds stowed carelessly in the cargo bay moldered.
A farmer hoards last year’s seed stock –
it is the gold that he’ll invest in future furrows.
Some investments don’t pan out, like a field of beans
planted before a mostly rainless summer.
The farmer, expecting bushels,
reaped a baby-food jar of desiccated beans
which, far from disdaining, he saved and sowed
the next year and the next year and the next
producing a heap of hardship-hardened beans
with which to seed the dry years ahead.