Not Yet: Part 2
The Seed
Before the tree, a seed.
Before the seed, a tree.
Over and over,
you plant a dream.
You water with time and
attention; you wait.
While waiting
you doubt.
Nothing sprouts.
Where are you in the cycle?
A seed is quiet. A seed lies dormant. Buried in the dark soil, a seed doesn’t do anything yet.
Having traveled a long way from home, carried by wind or fur or fingers or digestion from a burrowed cove of sameness with other seeds exactly like itself, a seed now learns a new geography where it’s separate but connected, where it finds more diversity than was before conceivable.
It can’t even imagine what change lies ahead. If life has her way, the seed will change into something else entirely. If life has her way, the seed will grow unrecognizable to even itself and be called by a different name.
I Choose
The past becomes burden
when narrowing future, we let
tenses slip into sameness.
This was that, becomes
This is that, becomes
This will be that.
But life comes
healing comes
rooting comes
reach comes
when we locate the seed of our yes
and hold the tension of our not yet.
What are the seeds in my life? What am I collecting, what am I planting? What am I watering, what am I thinning?
For seed to spread, it must leave the familiar, travel far away from home, and die. When it wakes, the world is unrecognizable, a different season. When it wakes, it is unrecognizable to itself, everything familiar metabolized into a new form. It could never have planned the scope of its own unfolding, and yet those plans were hidden all along within the seed.
From David Whyte’s “What to Remember When Waking:”
What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough
for the vitality hidden in your sleep.To be human is to become visible
while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window
toward the mountain presence of everything that can be,
what urgency calls you to your one love?
What shape waits in the seed of you
to grow and spread its branches
against a future sky?
The size and shape of a seed does not indicate the size and shape of a plant. Don’t mislabel small, quiet dreams as insignificant. Don’t mistake bold, brilliant dreams as greedy. Don’t mistake shaky, hesitant dreams as weak. Water them all, and see what grows.
What are the dreams in my life? What am I discounting, what am I inflating? What am I afraid of sprouting, what am I self-sabotaging?
Nikita Gill’s “The Forest:”
One day, when you wake up,
you will find that you've become a forest.You've grown roots and found strength in them
that no one thought you had.You have become stronger
and full of life-giving qualities.You have learned to take all the negativity around you
and turn it into oxygen for easy breathing.A host of wild creatures live inside you
and you call them stories.A variety of beautiful birds nest inside your mind
and you call them memories.You have become an incredible
self-sustaining thing of epic proportions.And you should be so proud of yourself,
of how far you have come from the seeds of who you used to be.
Where Things Grow
I am learning about you, he said:
When you are heavy,
you get as close to the ground as you can.
You lie flat on your back.
I do? She said.
Yes. Naked in the backyard, you
became seed with the weeds.
You tumbled to the desert
to rooftop hot sand.
You bedded juniper needles.
Even now, you blanket my carpet.
When you grieve,
you want ground.
She was quiet.
She said, yes.
Down low is where things grow.