The Seed Collectors

By Brittany Deininger

Having shrugged off madness,
two scientists
tucked seeds
into a bottle-warmer
leftover from their own
mothering.

When given what they needed
date palms
came back from
two thousand years
of extinction and fruited.

There are some brinks
you don’t come back from.
Then again, some stories
begin in the middle, after death.
Why is it resurrection
has been women’s work?

Do you remember how
to come back
laughing, how to bind the wound,
how to say help me,
how to call down the wild bird

till it gives your tongue back
and burning? Go on,
bite into the absurd miracle,
half-bite to the pit,
sucking on the soft-sweet flesh.

---

Brittany Deininger is a poet, feminist theologian, and educator. She received an MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College and an MATC from The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology. Her work has appeared in On Being, EcoTheo Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Metphrastics, Pensive, and elsewhere. She lives in New York.