I saw the brown-skinned workers
bent double, seeding the fields
of the San Juaquin Valley in the greening spring,
and I knew

that they were seeding more
than little, brown plants-to-be,

they were seeding themselves,
as we all seed ourselves,
and their lives
will come up in a harvest

that scatters its own
seeds in the wind

to be reborn
as many times
as the number
of seeds
they have sown

Max Reif

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/san-juaquin-valley-pictorial/