Seed time

Picture I There was a picture on the wall of Miss Green's first grade room It said ``The Sower'' on a little plaque stuck on the gold-colored frame It was of a man with a burlap sack slung across his shoulders - a bag full of seeds that he threw around with a sweep of his arm as he moved in great strides across the open ground He didn't walk or move in the picture on the wall But I saw him move and I saw the seeds fall in a sort of circular swirl like rain when the wind whips it across the road with a sweep like the twirl of a cowboy's rope Picture II I think of the picture now as I watch my father with the rake marking furrows in the dirt for my lettuce seeds to lie in They're flat and white and slithery in the paper bag beneath my fingers as I gather a handful and slide them off into their bed of soft brown earth I can see the picture of Papa and me framed and hanging on the wall Two figures now instead of one shaped against the sky I see the garden and the coming of dusk and the name on the little plaque on the frame ``The Sowers''