Seed Dreams

Do you think a seed has dreams inside its casing?

Do you think it wonders or knows the shape and color and height and girth of its being. Does it see its potential in a dream filled with possibilities and service? It must hope it will land in fertile soil and find fulfillment in its genetic destiny. Does it worry about sustaining life if it lands in inhospitable terrain and succumbs to the dry or to digestion in seed eating mammals and birds?

Can you imagine, in your mind’s mirror, the hopes and wishes of the seed embryo? It’s a plant in a dream state of development. Most seeds contain a built-in food supply called the endosperm. It’s made up of either or all of proteins, carbohydrates or fats. The hard outer covering called a seed coat protects the seed from disease and insects, and prevents water from entering the seed and prematurely birthing the plant into a universe of appreciation and ignorance until the time is right.

I say appreciation because there are people the world over who embrace the elegance of flowers and their importance in our daily lives to engender beauty, grace, color, form, and especially aroma in our moments of awareness, celebration, sorrow and need.

And I say ignorance since there are too many people who do not take time to do the proverbial, “smell the Roses,” or the Honeysuckle, the Peonies, the Wisteria, and the Petunias.

The best estimate of the number of plant species worldwide is 400-thousand. It’s probably much more. Some of those plants flower and some do not; all seed or reproduce in some way.

Have you ever really looked at the undulating folds of a Rose or truly felt the velvety softness of its texture.

The Honeysuckle vine and its flower festoon the world with about 180 species. The sweet scented aroma attracts human and insect alike. The bugs like the nectar; humans like the beauty, the medicinal and the tea qualities of the plant.

A blossom blooms from ‘neath the sticks

Ascending to a raying sun,

Reaching teaching all the rest,

That trying lets it be the one.

It cares not how it started there

Nor if the frost will take its bite.

Its instinct finds the noble path

To move between and find the light.

It shares the water and the ground,

No drop or space more than it needs.

Between the rocks on stony crust

First it flowers, and then it seeds.

The splendor of the leafy plant

Belies the dry and sandy loam.

The beauty found within the seed

Will find a place to make a home.

How can it be that we don’t see

this could be true for humankind?

Perhaps its clutter in our thoughts

And dust within our conscience mind.