The Wrong Kind of Seeds

“I only wanted bush beans,” Lisa muttered with a pout.
She put them in her pocket, unaware that one fell out.
“I don’t know how to grow the kind you have to tie on poles.”
She picked out some tomato plants and went to dig the holes.
She carefully erected wire cages all around
To keep the fruits from rot by holding branches off the ground.
And then she planted sunflowers, the giant striped kind,
Not noticing the bean seed that she trampled on behind.

The bean sent out its roots into the damp receptive sod,
And, after some days, sprouted out the leaves, the stems, the pod.
Creatively they wove themselves around what was at hand,
Encircling stalks and wires and limbs of anything that stands.
The tendrils scaled the sunflower stalks with blossoms still in tow,
Tenaciously exploring for the light to make beans grow.

The day that Lisa came to cut some sunflowers with her knife
She found the sturdy pole bean that had lusted for its life.
“Why, fancy that!” she cried out loud, as certainly she should,
For she could feed her family on pole beans that were good.
“I never thought that without poles we ever could be fed,
But pole beans have a lust for life. Beans will be beans,” she said.