So You Planted A Seed
by Andrew B. Watt

So you planted a seed.
The first thing that happens when you plant a seed is
absolutely nothing. For a long time.

The seed stays dormant
until heat and pressure build up inside and then 
POP!
The shell pops open, creating a space in the soil.

From Earth’s perspective, at least on a microscopic scale,
an earthquake has occurred.
The soil is shattered, broken open.
Things will never remain quite as they once were.

You can’t expect to plant a seed, though, 
and expect things to remain as they were.
If you didn’t want change, maybe… just maybe…
you shouldn’t have planted it!

Next come the roots,
curling into broken ground, sending out feelers.
Seeds release complex chemistries 
the moment they open,
poisoning whatever 
will not serve the seed — if it can.

Those self-same chemistries
call allied species to the neighborhood,
invite them in, like gentrifiers,
to take over the ground.
The ground will not remain the same.

Do not seek to hold on to everything,
willing this to stay, or that to remain.
Don’t try to say, “keep this,” or “keep that” or “let’s hold on to these.”
Some things are meant to die in this moment, that other things may live.
You must allow the magic to do its work

Otherwise you will injure the seedling, 
or kill it before it has a chance to  to take root, or to grow.

Now, it sends up leaves, unfurling them to the sun
like sails, like power plants sucking in energy for what comes next
which is the drawing down of the Moonlight
and the Sunlight
and the Starlight
for whatever comes next.

The seed knows, of course. Pop!
The seed is complete and entire. 
Every part of a seed touches every other part of a seed,
and when the time comes, POP!
Then the seed contains all and everthing which is needed —
all the information and all the energy and all the fuel
to do what a seed always does.
What it will always do.

For the name of a seed,
of any seed, really… 
of your seed…
is always the same —

Change.

(found at SpiritFire Festival, 11 July 2019, while making a ‘seed’ for the Thursday night fire-lighting, c. 10:16 pm)