Svalbard Global Seed Vault
The mountain, body of sandstone and ice,
quakes with the blast of a long tunnel,
opening into echoes of vaulted rooms.
Seeds, sleeping children,
come to dream in the cold,
not by wind or wing, but wrapped
and sealed, unopened,
like the still-fresh honey in an Egyptian tomb
—a promise for the next world.
Some will survive a hundred years, or thousands:
the Aztecs’ amaranth and maize,
Thailand’s long-grained Japonica,
black-purple as thunder.
Apples from Kazakh forests, buckwheat from Siberia,
quinoa culled from the Andes’ heights.
And minuscule teff,
whose name means “lost” in Amharic—so small,
it vanishes from your palm.
Sometimes famine comes that fast.
And if there is no one
to come for them, what then?
Through the doubt-filled drought of night,
the seeds go on
dreaming of dampness, sun—
the mustard seed, hushed
kingdom, waits inside its yellow globe.
Hannah Fries is the author of Forest Bathing Retreat and the poetry collection Little Terrarium. Read more.
Hannah Fries’ poem, Svalbard Global Seed Vault, was previously published in Little Terrarium (Hedgerow Books, 2016) and is reprinted here by permission of the author.