In poets, poems sleep
(all men are poets)
like seeds dreaming in earth
which wait for
the awakening kiss of silver rain
to free them from
their spore bonds.
Some
tight-shelled
resist the rain until
harsh cycles of heat/frost
persuade them.
But whenever that
catalytic moment
comes to compel
they rise humped
heavy with cotyledons.
Slowly
slowly they will
straighten and their
own true leaves appear.
Neither poem nor seed
can be urged before its time
but
each will have a flowering
in the sun!
During her years in Newark Margaret Tsuda published two books of poems; the second, Urban river (1976), contained this piece.
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