September Prayer

You can’t put the seed back after the pod has burst. A featherweight traveler, the seed knows how to fly. On the edge of this little woods I have seen the milkweed travel, the one at the bend in the path appearing across the ravine after the snows have gone.

It might have been called a Miracle, the plant that walks, but for the rites of fall, like holy days, returning every year to reveal this mystery pods splitting open and the shiny, silken seeds glistening in the sunlit air, taking flight in the wind, and doing exactly what they were meant to do.

Seeds know how to fly, and plants travel despite their roots. Miracles happen all the time. When we have learned this there will be no more turning back, the journey having just begun.

Karen Hering