Crown of Thorns

Without seeds life as we know it would cease to exist. Every year, as the summer comes to an end, plants dry up as the beautiful flowers and green leaves fade and fall to the ground. Most of us cut them, pull them up, or mow them up with the lawn mower. We give little thought to the importance of those dried up seed pods. They provide food for birds and animals in the winter, and still there are enough left to sprout and grow again in the spring. Farmers plant and harvest many grains for consumption. These seeds allow us to continue living year after year.  This poem in in recognition of the seeds that sustain us.

Of what use are your long gnarled stems

Heads balding from the loss of fragile beauty

Sucked dry by bird and bee

Seeking the nectar of life hidden deep inside

Of what use is your thorny crown

Pocked and dried by sun and wind

Waiting in the remaining time

To be cut broken discarded

The glory days of ephemeral beauty gone

What’s left for the aging freckled head

What beauty remains for the dried and broken

It was not all for naught, the losing of ones crown

For underneath the crown lies the key to beauty

The ongoing genetics of life the giftwrapped wonder

Beauty is in the seed passing on and on and on

Since the beginning of time

Without the crown of thorns there would be no future beauty

There would be no life here after

Beauty is passing,  life is fragile,  but the seed remains forever

To once again spring forth from the ashes of the past

Bringing life and hope and from that dried crown of thorns 

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Photos: Dwight L. Roth