The Intent in the Teller

“A seed is a conveyance system for information. . .

A genetically modified organism is a plant, animal microorganism. So a GMO is also small. Small enough to fit in a seed. But, large enough to contain a virus.

A virus is infectious.

A virus is in photos, somehow beautiful.

Like a flower grown from tiny seed. And a seed?

. . . It is words taken wing—words written in the language of adenine, cytosine, guanine, thymine,

A virus replicates only inside the living cells of an organism.

The colors. The symmetry.

What would I think if someone hadn’t told me what to think about what the virus is?

What would I think if I had listened to those who told me which plants to call the weeds?

A genetically modified organism has been modified in a laboratory using genetic engineering.

Not old stories. New findings. Not books or pages or even memories. Findings. Developments. Replacements.

. . . ancient instructions clasped between hard covers,

A genetically modified organism is new combinations of plant, animal, bacterial and virus genes that do not occur in nature. Yet somehow it is not invasive though it invades and has invaded.

GMO is planted not pulled

like wild mustard or buck thorn.

Such seed stories fight to be sold yet not to see their names in print.

On boxes. On labels. Fingerprinted in pollen set adrift across fence lines to open pollinated

seeds that translate

. . . everything needed to carry a story to a new place where it. . .” **

I realize I didn’t copy the next page.

What are we more afraid of? Viruses in nature that replicate on their own? Or, seeds that don’t?

**Quote from nature writer and philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore.

Chaskey, Scott. (2014). Seedtime: On the History, Husbandry, Politics and Promise of Seeds.

Rodale: New York.