Love Sowing

image borrowed from bing

Love Sowing

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but rather

by the seeds that you plant.”--Robert Lewis Stevenson.

I once knew

           an old bible thumper

                               who lived in Ballard,

who had been a missionary

                               in Central America.

When I was a callow thirteen,

he showed me a thorny bush

in his backyard,

         saying it had spiritual significance

         because it was a Paliurus Spina-Christa,

the plant the Romans used

to make Christ’s crown of thorns. 

He told me his name was Jude,

& that he considered himself

to be an “organic philosopher”.

“Did you know that man’s seed

              is like that of the black mustard;

              one of the smallest of seeds,

but when cast into fecundity,

              it will grow into a golden yellow tree?”

He showed me a big impressive green house

butted up to a tiny chicken shed,

           yes, he kept chickens in the city--

& in the humid hot house stood

           a dwarf Date Palm plant,

           loaded with fruit;

“Our Lord ate from a tree just like this one.”

& in large dun ceramic pot grew

    a dwarf common olive tree,

    laden with clusters of greenish-black olives;

smiling he gently said,

    “If you ever become a peacemaker, stop by

     & I will give you an olive branch.”

Oddly, he was proud of a tall thick patch of common nettles;

           “These beauties grow everywhere in the world,

              they are one of God’s mysterious miracles, 

for they will sting you almost blind

             if you touch them with your bare skin,

and yet if you pick them with gloves,

            & boil them down,

            their very essence

turns into medicinal teas & salves. 

Near his

         back porch there

                  was this fat rusty wash tub

                                overflowing with lovely flowers

                  growing together,

          intertwined,

their petals shaped like the heads of sea horses; 

“This is my Humanis Tub, 

good & evil, black & white, yin & yang--

Angel’s trumpets sharing space with Devil’s trumpets,

inseparable-creating left-brain right-brain melodies.”

I returned to his place

twenty years later,

ready for my gift

of an olive branch;

but he had died,

& so had his biblical garden,

yet I understood

        that he had enriched

        the soil with his passing,

& my mind with his kindness. 

Seeds of yesterday,

become tomorrow,

& only the seed-keepers

prevent extinction. 

Glenn Buttkus

Posted over on dVerse Poets Poetics

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