Poems by Deborah Gorlin

Sweet Seed in the Rock

by Deborah Gorlin

From Canary Spring 2022

Deborah lives in the Pioneer Valley near the Fort River, the longest free-flowing tributary of the Connecticut River, where attempts have been made to save the endangered freshwater dwarf wedge mussel.

Once upon this time, vaulted deep
within the mountain, bundled
in foil, sealed in boxes set in rows,
the seeds in their Doomsday dorm,
run in place like dogs dreaming
of chasing squirrels and deer. Exiled,
they long for their former homelands:
Syria and Chernobyl. North Korea,
Palestine, so many places, where war,
Round-up, weather, fires, Bayer, politics,
disappeared them. Saviors hope to hide
them here from harm, to keep them secret
like Anne Franks in attics, spares
to their heirs, to sock them away under
the thick down mattress of ice
and snow in a fairytale climate itself
imperiled, why just yesterday, a melt,
from rising temps. Among the 20 million
samples, some heirloom and ancient grains,
farming from its very origins! as far back
as the Fertile Crescent, the cereals, emmer
from Sumer, bitter vetch, flax, hulled barley.
A Judean date palm nicknamed Methuselah.
For these fetal plants, sleeping Rip Van Winkles,
future paused, passes them. However remote,
no Zoom for them, holed up in their North Pole
nest egg, tiny kings in the mountain waiting it out,
until their return to rule. Dirt sick, they wish
to hitch one random ride of vagrant wind
to burr animal fur, to squirt out of fox’s scat,
for sun light’s long arms to lift them gently up
from their dark cribs, for water to nurse
them with its transparent milk, to be
of use, to grow below, whatever their destiny,
carrots or celery, beets or cabbage, come
what may, hurry, please, to give them
a life while there’s still earth.