"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been,

I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed there,

and I am prepared to expect wonders."

~ Henry David Thoreau

Mud. Clouds. Birdsong. I am out early after baking. Woke at 6:00 a.m. to make homemade chocolate chip scones. Delivered, hot from the oven in a basket with a jar of jam, with fresh cut forsythia to my dear friend for her pandemic-timed rite of passage birthday. Not the birthday I had wished and hoped to celebrate this way with her. Still, it’s fun, making and leaving this surprise, like a kind of early May-day secret surprise. I walk a shortened walk to finish preparing for the Farm Pond Writers workshop I’m holding on Zoom: the theme of seeds. And in my head as I clomp through mud and over broken branches, I am seeding a new version of a poem I started in early March. I need to get it ready for an afternoon workshop with a new group of poets I’m meeting with bi-weekly to workshop our poems. This poem has frustrated me, and I’ve wanted to stop work on it, forget it, put it away, dump it. Instead, I’m hearing some new lines. Will I have time to get them down? Our Farm Pond workshop is rich with deep connection and powerful writing from the seed prompt. We are a full house; it’s lovely to be together again. In the late afternoon I find an hour for the poem revision, a quiet hour while I leave my daughter to prep the roasted vegetables for dinner. This new poetry workshop, seven us, works so well. I appreciate the level of craft and feedback, the fine poems. My poem is working after all. The smell of roasted butternut squash, red beets, and Brussel sprouts rises from the kitchen to my room, slips under the door. I make the wild rice and clean the wildly messy kitchen. We praise the vegetables and cook. We eat.