Seeds

Their world is only sleep,
more sleep and dreams of birth, remembering
another earth, the teasing scent of spring
and dancing in the wind. But bedded deep

in freezing dark, their tiny kind lives twice,
immersed in myth. At need,
if granted just the smallest space, a seed
can slumber undisturbed straight through an Ice Age

in hazy visions of a quiet groping
upward toward a distant unseen world
of sun and spaciousness. Forever curled
around a dream, their hope

begins and ends in warmth and light. And if
sometimes a seed’s sleep is a fitful sleep,
its couch too cold and deep
to crouch in comfort, still, what better gift?