The day and the seed of small things

Poem by Dana Smith

How will it come, the day of small things
between the heart-break and herb robert;
the rape and the ox-eye daisies?

How do the holy hold the ground
for the seed to die and endure
its slow growth into abiding?

Where is the kinship of need
In Help me if I am deaf
and doubting even as I sleep

in the field of forget-me-nots that runs down
to the sea where refugees wait?
What can change if I cannot believe

in the thousands of trees sprung from one seed: 
the aspens that speak as they spread
from Pendle Hill, quaking to Pennsylvania.

How do I live, wanting to be a part
of this dynamic enacting one seed
of hope by witnessing or naming?

Can I be one who beds down one bit of heart’s
ease, like Love in its mist
between the bombarded and the war-

hardened where poppies sprung…
like the tongue of the dead
and the living who speak

in the dream of this little day.
How? God knows how.
Still Spirit waits

like all small things, seen
and unseen. Somewhere
a mustard seed is breaking.

Dana writes in gratitude to Rachel Muers for her George Richardson Lecture, ‘The Day and the Seed of Small Things.’

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