SEEDS OF CHANGE

Yesterday, out in the fine gold spring day tilling and planting spinach, I kept being distracted by loud poppings here and there in the sky, thinking them perhaps to be monkeys gathering and eating seeds in the trees or something, or maybe birds, or the trees themselves stretching in the warmth of spring, or...

Here and there the popping continued, catching at my ear like a mosquito, so finally I gave up and went off toward the heart of the matter, where I stood in the road near the nearest of the places whence the popping had come like some slow-motion popcorn, and... POP! POP!! I saw no monkeys, I saw no birds, I saw-- movement only, up in the trees, it was like a big slow stretching, a sudden twitch, a rush of tangle, a thrash, a solid sprinkling--

It was the wisteria pods unleashing their seeds in the warmth of the sun, the rise of the sap and the touch of the spring winds, all come together at the right moment and WHAP!! A pod would unleash, twist like a sling and shoot off its lifebullets--

Just as I was wondering how far they could travel, WHANG! one hard brown flat seed struck the metal fence near me and came to rest by my foot. I picked it up and threw it a good deal farther on, changing the universe forever.