After
the joy of seedlings and
hopeful tiny plants,
what about those static seeds?
Stagnant, ungerminated,
wasted. Dead?
Small pods of hope
dormant and waiting
and waiting
and…
What did they lack
that left them unbroken,
that life refused to burst through?
What was done wrong, what failure
led here? How incomplete, useless,
surely the gardener’s fault.
Why is hope
why is hope ending
here.
Can it start again?
More darkened earth, more
cold endless winter, more melt of snow
and more, more relentless sunshine.
What life is left in ungerminated
hope
Immersed in the world of parenting young children, A. S. Compton writes fiction (A Grandmother Named Love, Inanna, 2019). She turned to poetry during the pandemic and has work forthcoming with Demeter Press. She is querying a historical fiction about Mennonites during WWII. Raised on a small Ontario (Haldimand Tract) farm, she moonlights processing sauerkraut. She loves skating, baking cookies, and trying not to murder her houseplants.
