The Seed I Planted

The seed I planted long ago was a complex seed. It had DNA and history. I did not plant it and forget about it. I surrounded it with tenderness and love. I watered it with my blood, sweat and tears. I chased away the bugs and protected the new growth from weeds and other dangers with my eyes, my arms and my mind. I showed the little sprout how to face the sun. I taught the new growing entity how to bend when the wind was strong.

I put in time and effort and expense and my heart in order to help the seedling grow strong and vibrant and develop into an adult who is ready to spread its own seeds into the world.

Some days it rained so hard that the little sprout almost drowned and I thought it must surely break. But nature has a way of forgiving and I had the strength and power to hold it up until the sun came out again.

I look around me at a field of flowers and I think, “those were once seeds”. Those seeds came from plants. Those plants were once seeds that came from plants and so on. And if I were to allow the sun to hide behind a cloud I could say that the millennia of plants that formed and dispersed their seeds are long gone and surely forgotten. But the sun always comes around again to spread its light, and that light shines a warm and welcome reality on me… I will surely one day be forgotten, but one day there will be a field of beautiful flowers somewhere that someone will admire and perhaps photograph or put oil to canvass to immortalize and it will be there only because of the seed that I planted.