What To Do With Your One Grain of Wheat


Either way you're gonna die:
clutching your seed in your fist
buried in your Sunday suit
the lid sealed shut with a rubber gasket
watertight lifetime guarantee, 
impermeable to the forces of nature.
And the damn thing sprouts and its pale stem 
pushes through your dried fingers 
and urges upward straining for sunlight
until it bumps the steely casket lid 
and bends and arcs downward finally surrendering.

Either way you're gonna die:
You can open your hand and let loose
the grain of love you bear.
You can open your protected soul
to life and death and mystery in the breathable air.
You can plant your seed in the welcoming earth
and die to your fear and let something uncontrollable grow.
When you are buried like the seed 
it is already free to break through soil
and let the sun kiss it to life
and sprinkle the earth with a thousand new grains.

Either way you're gonna die:
But if you let your seed go
and die before you die
there will be wheat and flour enough
to bake bread with holy wild yeast 
and feed the hungry world,
which gives thanks for your small grain
to the One who made you to die for the fruit of love.

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