Which Seeds Will Grow?: Poems

A new collection of poems by Palestinian-American Catholic poet Andrew Calis, Which Seeds Will Grow? ​finds hope in the Holy Land.

Grappling with his identity as a Christian Palestinian American, Andrew Calis recalls his father who saw Israeli jets swoop over his house in Jerusalem and a military helicopter fire bullets into his front yard. The same father who wouldn’t teach his children Arabic, for fear that they would have accented English, who kept his past close to his chest--unknown to his son. He recounts the death of his grandfather, a grandfather who would beat his father, and for whom he could not fully mourn because Arab men don’t cry.

Andrew Calis digs through the pain of his family and of his homeland to find the fragile seed of contained life and delicate hope for the Holy Land--and reflects on how tenderly that seed must be nurtured.

Steeped in wonder, Which Seeds Will Grow? explores the past and the present, from ancient Jerusalem to Baltimore’s gardens and alleys through the lens of a Palestinian American. The poems are patient, waiting for seasons to end, waiting for space to expand outward, and waiting for light to touch the earth. Despite the difficulty of waiting, readers will find hope in hopelessness and comfort in the contemplation of the world and its sacred mysteries.

From Which Seeds Will Grow?

Planting a Garden
Stealing clippings from neighbors’ yards
And smiling as they grew their own blooms
In the safe and hidden rooms where we
Keep watch on them like they are our children.
***
Nothing grew. We knew this was
A possibility, had read
It sometimes takes two years,
And we hoped in spite of only dirt
For the green that could be anything.

Perhaps we dug too shallow or too close
To the shade, or stepped where we had already planted,
Either crushing roots or breaking their curled
First shoots before they broke the surface.
***
So when one survived, wove a green line
Of its own, thinly sprouting something unknowable, I ran
Inside and for a moment felt
What John must have felt
Leaving Peter, old and unsteadily running,
And running breathlessly
To tell everyone --
Everyone
What had happened
And how you wouldn’t believe your eyes.

Andrew J. Calis is an Arab-American poet, teacher, and husband, and an overjoyed father of four. His first book of poetry, Pilgrimages (Wipf & Stock, 2020), was praised by James Matthew Wilson for having ’the intensity of Hopkins’ and for ’layer[ing] light on light in hopes of helping us to see.’ His work has appeared in America, Dappled Things, Presence, Convivium and elsewhere, and he teaches at Archbishop Spalding High School in Maryland.