A Seed

A Seed

By Carol Pelizzari

Two thousand years ago

No person now alive was there to see it -

Even so, a date palm dropped fruit

A traveller picked one up -

Perhaps a child, craving the sugar.

Tossing aside the pit,

Mundane at first,

Tiny and fragile,

But a vessel of life.

Twelve years ago

Others picked it up,

A scientist, an archaeologist, a botanist.

They did not crave sugar,

Their reward was sweeter.

After the unimaginably long wait

Two thousand years after its mother -

Long after the child and their children –

A seed was planted.

And it grew