Excerts from poems by Mary Oliver about seeds

But the seed has been planted, and when has happiness ever required much evidence to begin
its leaf green breathing?


for the seeds to begin to form in the hardening thistles
dazzling as the teeth of mice
but black
filling the face of every flower

Never in my life
had I felt so near
that porous line
where my own body was done with
and the roots and the stems and the flowers
began

Their bright faces
which follow the sun will listen,
and all those rows of seeds -
each one a new life!

I thought the earth remembered me, she took me back so tenderly, arranging her dark skirts, her pockets full of lichens and seeds.

I made friends with the creatures nearby , they flowed through the fields and under the tent wall, or padded through the door, grinning through their many teeth, look for seed, suet, sugar

that now is nowhere except underfoot
mouldering in that black subterranean castle of unobservable mysteries- roots and sealed seeds and the wanderings of water


we did not hear, beneath our lives
the old walls falling out of true,
foundations shifting in the dark
when seedlings blossomed in the eaves,

In my hands, I will see the holy seeds
and a sweetness will rise up from these petal-bundles
so heavy I must close my eyes to take it in

and I hope you too will pause to admire the slender trunk, the leaves, the holy seeds, the ground they grow from year after year with striving and patience