Ars Poetica - Unknown Seed

Poetry arrives like a seed, foreign, 
tucked into your pocket when you weren’t looking— 
a stowaway from some distant garden. 
You don’t know its name, 
you don’t know its bloom, 
and when you plant it, you’re not even sure 
if it will grow in your soil. 

But you water it anyway, a quiet ritual, 
like speaking to someone who’s still a stranger, 
not yet a friend. Each line is a sip of light, 
each verse, a touch of rain. 
It’s slow work, 
but there’s joy in the waiting, 
the slow unfurling of leaf and stem, 
the way a poem reaches out in a language 
it doesn’t know how to speak—yet. 

And with time, it starts to show itself: 
veins running through green, 
the roots deepening underground, 
tendrils reaching out as if trying 
to pull something closer. 

The more you tend to it, the clearer it becomes, 
but always with mystery, the way a shadow 
clings to the underside of a leaf. 
Not everything is meant to be named, 
not every bud blooms in daylight. 
A good poem is like this: 
it grows in the spaces you don’t control. 
It asks for care, but it doesn't beg for understanding. 

A poem should be a living thing, 
its beauty not in perfection 
but in the wildness it retains. 
A poem should surprise you— 
with how familiar it feels, 
but yet unknown. 

And why should poetry matter? 
Because it teaches us to wait, 
to listen to something other than ourselves, 
to believe that there are things worth tending, 
even if we don’t always know 
what they will become. 

Poetry reminds us: 
we, too, are seeds— 
we, too, need water and light, 
and we, too, grow best 
when given room 
to be wild.