Plow the World For Planting

green leafy plant starting to grow on beige racks

words are like seeds

within are leaf and stem and root

words are like seeds

hold next year’s hope when the world bleeds

and when they’re trampled under boots

it plants them deep—they push up shoots—

words are like seeds

ink is like blood

words flow from pain onto the page

ink is like blood

in poetry, from pens—a flood

of words that light a way through rage

that cut the bars that form our cage

ink is like blood

we planted words

against the bitterness and cold

we planted words

with what was left we fed the birds

deep in our hearts, while seasons rolled

seeds full of hope split—to unfold

we planted words

Poem by Janet Ruth

Janet Ruth is a NM ornithologist. Her writing focuses on connections to the natural world. Her sonnet “Invisible Before Us Untouched and Still Possible” won a Laureates’ Choice Award in the 2022 Maria W. Faust Sonnet Contest. She has recent poems in Oddball Magazine, Tulip Tree Review, The Ocotillo Review, Sin Fronteras, Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies including Where Flowers Bloom (The Red Penguin Collection, 2022), and Moving Images: poetry inspired by film (Before Your Quiet Eyes Publication, 2021). Her first book, Feathered Dreams: celebrating birds in poems, stories & images (Mercury HeartLink, 2018) was a Finalist for the 2018 NM/AZ Book Awards. https://redstartsandravens.com/janets-poetry/