Not Everything

I don't really have a green thumb.
For all the tomato plants I have grown every year,
I haven't had much to show.
I try to start seedlings indoors,
but I start them too soon or too late,
or I forget to water them.
I threw out a whole tray of seedlings that didn't make it this spring.
I had an empty planter box, and on a whim,
I started throwing veggie scraps into it to compost.
That's where the seedling failures went.
And one day, I looked in the compost pile, and saw a happy little plant.
I didn't know what it was until I came upon some roadside plants for sale,
and saw the label on a cucumber plant.
Sure enough, I have been harvesting cucumbers lately from my discard pile.
And I was just sitting here thinking about the things we throw away.
The people we write off.
The ones we assume will never have any fruit.
Maybe it's you you've given up hope on.
But keep watering.
Not everything that looks dead is.
And seed comes to life when it's watered.