Seeds

Particles
of pure potency.

Cragsmen find you.
And beachcombers.
And nomads.

Creatively oblivious
to tragedy, loss, hatred,
you find leg-room
with refugees,
in fire-felled forests,
and under human wreckage
of all sorts.
You keep coming,
supply ever exceeding
expectations. Tiny tyrants,
your slaves are everywhere:
breezes, bees, butterflies, species
with six legs – and more – and less –
a child’s sweet believing breath,
beings with feathers, every kind
of weather. Squirrels bury
nuts (tree seeds) in the hope
of a later feast and then
forget the place.

Seeds,
I’ve sussed you now: you
are the cosmic core,
the praying hub
of the living.

Then, when we,
human squirrels,
bury our seeds
and forget the place
of the promised feast,
your sly green shoots
show us the surplus
strewn by the
secret service of
ever-conspiring life.

By Johanna Caton, O.S.B.

Johanna Caton is a Benedictine nun of Minster Abbey in England, but she was born in the United States and lived there until adulthood, when her religious vocation took her to the United Kingdom. She writes poetry as a way of understanding and celebrating the presence of God in her life. Creation often speaks to her of the presence of the creator, and she reflects on this a great deal in her poetry. Her poems so far have appeared or will appear in The Christian Century, A Time of Singing Quarterly Poetry Journal, The Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Catholic Poetry Room website, and other online venues. She does not have a personal website, but the Daily Reflections blog of the website, Agnellus Mirror, has posted quite a number of her poems, and links to four of them follow.
https://agnellusmirror.wordpress.com/2017/10/18/18-october-saint-luke-watching/ https://agnellusmirror.wordpress.com/2019/07/18/july-18-cowboy/ https://agnellusmirror.wordpress.com/2019/07/15/july-15-thunder-rock/ https://agnellusmirror.wordpress.com/2016/09/05/fiat-2/