To the seeds in the Svalbard seed vault, kaze no denwa by Lee Ann Roripaugh

what is a seed
but a code of knowing—

some love of unfolding
into secret dreams of green,
wet, and sunlight?

dormant and doomsday vaulted
at 18 degrees below Celsius—
the first species counterpoint
against a cantus firmus
of subterranean missile silos
planted across the globe /
against the held-breath waiting
for some terrible kind of bloom
to take root and come true

how do we know if an embryo
will turn into a hope or a horror?

I think of my own vexed seed of self:
how I’ve tried to break open
my own coat of sadness and shame
through scarification
and rituals of chemicals

but still I tumble and dream
in my mute fugue state—
frozen, sealed in darkness
peripatetic, unable to take root / pierce
my way toward brightness

how do I wake up
before it’s too late?
ozone corroded to lace filigree
carbon monoxide’s bell jar
glaciers melted
and oceans spilling over
like too-full bowls of water—
flooded slumbering warheads
that rust to scale and flake

not even the tuning-fork hum
of bees to drone an accompaniment

who will bear witness
to this lonely germination, this
splitting of testa, this
dangling radicle, the slow
elongation of the epicotyl
that draws out plumules
from between the cotyledons
then pulls them backwards
through dark grains of soil?

who will hear the desolate song
of thirst and photosynthesis
and chlorophyll unfurling
a capella into this forsaken air?

Lee Ann Roripaugh’s most recent book is tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019). The current South Dakota State Poet Laureate, Roripaugh is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota, where she serves as Director of Creative Writing and Editor-in-Chief of South Dakota Review.