STARTING SEEDS

Gabriel Welsch

I will set up a table near the window,
run heat tape, fill a mister, lay the rows
of seed flats fluffed with peat, then

mark them with the packets, their panels full
optimists of color, the vegetation plump
with the science of test gardens—

cucumbers thick as movie star limbs,
peas lining casings like regiments of pearls,
a tomato the potent heft of a uterus.

These panels predict a bounty.
But now, there’s enough snow to bed the plots,
to moisten and turn them soft,

to lay the summer’s dust back down.
This is a job I do despite the fact
that it demands I kill half or more

of what I sow. This is a job
of beating blight, weeding the weak, making
the young endure drought to grow strong.

It is violence and preference up close
in sun by the window, where in the ample light
we know it all. Perhaps I overstate—

but prune, sow, dig, and pluck, break
earth and see how you sweat
with toil, are soiled with intent.