For the grandmother teaching children how to plant seeds in the community garden

“Just a little bit, they only
need to go down an inch,
make a small hole, use your pinkie,
put the seeds in,
gently, gently.”

Elders pass on practice with invocation of earth under fingernails
              It doesn’t matter so much if the rows are straight
              so long as we remember ourselves.

We can spend a day like this, or a life,
let afternoons pass under
shifting light and swollen clouds.

Plants need no permission, only our exhale,
sunbeams, a thin veil of rain.

How many more hopeful acts do we have left?

After a thousand tragedies,
sleepless nights staring up at the rafters,
the ground beneath
is waiting to begin again,
the seeds will still be true.