Parable

We are perpetual spring farmers
scattering words like seed,
most thieved by thorn or crow,
your opinion and my sentiment
burned before memory.

But occasionally autumn falls
and solitary drifters pitch crimson pearls and copper coins
that burrow, take root, grow -
     How do you handle being pretty?
          You write what your father dreams.

These seeds care not for thirty, sixty, or the ninety and nine;
they bear blood-red blooms for the one.
He who has ears let him hear.