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
