SEED FORGE: Meditations on Human Potential

A garden flanking Orapan’s home had frayed into gold, the crisp, late-autumn air whispering of
the coming frost. Orapan and Tara sat bound to a low stone bench, shadowed by skeletal remains
of a hydrangea bed.

Without warning, Tara drew smiled at Orapan and then drew out her phone and let a poem drift
into the cooling air:

	Is heaven folded into a hydrangea —
	tucked between its layered, lavender ears,
	patient as a secret?
	
	Does bliss come bursting from the blazing mouths of azaleas—
	those reckless, burning torches of ordinary yards?
	
	What elysium waits, unhurried and unnamed,
	in the long, wine-dark patience of the amaranth —
	that ancient, iron-willed  bloom
	feeding from the hungry earth before
	we came to exist?

	What raw, unruly ecstasy
	stirs in the butterweeds —
	those golden so-called weeds
	splitting through concrete
	with the casual, catastrophic confidence
	of something that was never told
	it wasn't allowed to grow?
	
	Of answers, I know nothing.
	I have pressed my ear to the velvet of many petals
	and heard only wind,
	or the hum of a mystery
	too large and too quiet
	to be named.
	
	Of this I am certain however:
	each of us are vessels
	with countless seeds.

	Most are waiting.
	for the right rain,
	for the right light,
	for a ripe moment
	to sprout.
	
The silence that followed that poem was almost tangible. Orapan’s eyes lingered on the fading
hydrangeas, on the horizon blurred by possibilities and loss.

“Many seeds, indeed,” she said, not to Tara but to the air itself — to give her thought a little
breathing room. Her voice carried a wondering lilt, as though other selves, still in seed,
stirred within her.

Tara slipped her phone away. “Well, my dear, never take poetry too seriously,” she said lightly
— the voice of one who has chosen calm over fire. “It’s just language on a balance beam, words
doing somersaults for the joy of the leap.”

Orapan turned to her, curious rather than reproachful. “Then what do you take seriously?” she
asked, her tone clear, unmarred by hesitation.

A lone hydrangea petal — thin as memory, pale as bone — released itself and drifted toward the
stones below.

"Only the knowledge," Tara said finally, watching it land, "that all things pass." She paused.
"Nothing else."

The garden enfolded them in its slow, amber light. Behind the fence, a lawnmower stuttered into
life, then died. A bee continued its ancient, rhythmic pilgrimage from bloom to bloom. And deep
beneath the soil , the seeds continued their patient, invisible labor.

=====================================================================================
from Celebrations ah Song: Rejoicing Through Art, Poetry & Narratives with T Newfields
LONG-SUMMARY: An exploration of the dormant, untapped potential within the human spirit, juxtaposing the quiet, 
evolutionary patience of nature against the fragile, fleeting reality of human existence.
SHORT-SUMMARY: Two friends ponder impermanence and unseen potential amid a fading garden.
KEYWORDS: human potential, impermanence, seed metaphors, transience, poetry, inner life, equanimity

Author: T Newfields [Nitta Hirou / Huáng Yuèwǔ] (b. 1955 - ?)
Begun: 2007 in Tokyo, Japan ✶ Finished: 2026 in Shizuoka, Japan
Creative Commons License: Attribution. {{CC-BY-4.0}} Granted

Disclosure: This piece was partially generated using AI tools for styling and ideation; 
            human editing was then applied.

< LAST   https://www.tnewfields.info/Celebrations/enriched.htm
  TOC    https://www.tnewfields.info/Celebrations/index.html
  NEXT > https://www.tnewfields.info/Celebrations/bounty.htm

TRANSLATIONS

DEUTSCH   https://www.tnewfields.info/de/samen.htm
ESPAÑOL   https://www.tnewfields.info/es/semillas.htm
FRANÇAIS  https://www.tnewfields.info/fr/graines.htm
NIHONGO   https://www.tnewfields.info/jp/shinrin.htm
ZHŌNGWÉN  https://www.tnewfields.info/zh/zhongzhi.htm


EARLIER VERSION: 
Orapan: Many seeds indeed! Hmm!

Tara:   Never take poetry too seriously – it is just a play of words.

Orapan: Well what do you take seriously?

Tara:   Only the knowledge that all things pass: nothing else.