Friday, August 15, 2008

Poetry Friday

Here is a lovely, wonder-filled poem by AIleen Fisher

The Seed

How does it know,
this little seed,
if it is to grow
to a flower or weed,

if it is to be
a vine or shoot,
or grow to a tree
with a long deep root?

A seed is so small
where do you suppose
it stores up all
of the things it knows?

This poem can be found in several anthologies, including
Days Like This : A Collection of Small Poems by Simon James and Spectacular Science: A Book of Poems.

The Poetry Friday Roundup is over at Big A little a. Head on over and enjoy some poems.

4 comments:

MmeT said...

I love this. It would be great to use as a discussion starter about seed ideas for writing.

Yat-Yee said...

I'm glad you like it. I never thought of it as a discussion starter but it can certainly be, can't it?

So, what are your thoughts on it?

I like the line about how a seed is to know if it will be a vine or a weed. We never know, do we, when we start writing, whether the ideas or words we put down, will eventually grow to be beautiful or have to be weeded? Yet we put them down, because that's the only thing we can do at that moment. The decision has to come much later, after we see how the ideas have grown.

jama said...

Lovely poem! Simple language says so much.

Yat-Yee said...

Thanks for visiting. The simplicity of the language makes it very endearing, doesn't it? I've read it maybe 50, 60 times to my children, and I still love it.