Yann has suggested that we post again here the poem Marcus wrote in response to Jim Archibald .... this originally appeared as part of the Archibald Archive (http://www.srgc.net/site/index.php/features-mainmenu-47/resources/268-jim-though-the-eyes-of-others)
Marcus Harvey on Jim A :
................ my absolute first choice is the recently departed Scottish plant hunter Jim Archibald.
For the last 20 years Jim and his wife, Jenny sent out to every corner of the world their seed catalogue. It always came unadorned, on A4, double-sided, plain white paper. No pictures, no drawings, just word descriptions, collection numbers, people and place names. It was The Bible to plant collectors, a compendium of a lifetime of plant hunting journeys and a cornucopia of dream plants. Jim could write the horticultural equivalent of the "20 second grab". But it was his preambles I looked forward to the most. He wrote on many subjects. His observations were pithy and irreverent but never boring, and often insightful. In 2001 in a piece entitled, Seller of Dreams, he wrote, "We are the sellers of dreams. We sell dreams to ourselves and hope to pay for their reality by work and knowledge. We sell dreams to you. What are seeds but dreams in packets?"
Marcus' poem.......Harvest
A summer’s harvest
Lies scattered before me
This spill of tiny dreams
Like unopened messages
Ripe with possibilities
Now my bespangled thrall
Grit, grain, seed, burr and thistledown
State of the art packaging
Forged in the elemental
Germed with new beginnings
This is God’s Holy Dust
Each bears its marks of kin
Jostling with inheritance
Some leafed in emerald
Some earthed in cinnabar
Primped in rock and light
Sphere, parachute, wing and arrow
the geometry of survival
Prodigious instruction distilled within
Root tap, stem sap, shoot
The whole miracle set to spring
What great hopes for such small packages
Not windblown nor water-washed
But transplanted by desire
Unwitting emissaries sprouting
Love letters arriving with the sun.