germs embryonic and vulnerable to inclement

fortune, anxious for them to take root and gestate

into rarefied specimens at an eventful hour

when our dreams will finally be in season.

Planting is a faithful deed, belief in action,

a principled defiance of daunting odds.

Rare is the reaper who did not first sow,

renouncing cynicism, banishing doubt.

Patiently awaiting the harvest, we admire

the impact of a single pebble in a pond,

rippling all around, a lithic seed in its watery layer,

its influence out of all proportion to its size.

Like the seed, we must break open to rise anew,

parting with roughcast forms to emerge

transcendent and reinvented, sometimes

unrecognizable to bygone impressions.

Seasons shift and we gather ripened yields

to check them against original hopes, conscious

of losses, satisfied with gains, trusting that

renewal is the one thing that never gets old.