What To Do With Your One Grain of Wheat

Either way you're gonna die:
clutching your seed in your fist
buried in your Sunday suit
the lid sealed shut with a rubber gasket

watertight lifetime guarantee, 

impermeable to the forces of nature.
And the damn thing sprouts and its pale stem 

pushes through your dried fingers 

and urges upward straining for sunlight
until it bumps the steely casket lid 

and bends and arcs downward finally surrendering.

Either way you're gonna die:
You can open your hand and let loose

the grain of love you bear.

You can open your protected soul

to life and death and mystery in the breathable air.
You can plant your seed in the welcoming earth

and die to your fear and let something uncontrollable grow.

When you are buried like the seed 

it is already free to break through soil

and let the sun kiss it to life

and sprinkle the earth with a thousand new grains.

Either way you're gonna die:

But if you let your seed go

and die before you die

there will be wheat and flour enough

to bake bread with holy wild yeast 

and feed the hungry world,

which gives thanks for your small grain

to the One who made you to die for the fruit of love.