A Lesson

She took a paper packet

of seeds in her fingers,

smudged with the deep brown

of loam, and tore it,

poured the dormant wisps

into her smooth open palm.

She prodded them, last year’s

remnants dried in the basement,

charcoal fragments with honey

feathers. We’d excavated

the garden bed in long, shallow

lines, relocating earthworms

to new sites. Mom was not

unsettled by the sleeping grubs

while I stabbed at them with

the tines of my cultivator.

She scattered the seeds

and told me feelings are

neither right nor wrong.

We tucked them into the soil.

-Sarah Preecher