THE WORLD IN HIS HANDS
He cups the earth in his bare hand
hovering over the waves and shores
of a hard brown seed and sees
its foam green future folded within
the intricate curled up structures-
all that fragile beige radicle potential
locked in the dark in the dirt in his palm
some soil shifts in his loose grip
and slips through red fingers parting
and trembling yellow light shines on
black sprinkles shaken and falling
free onto white fields still blank
with uncertainty about the harvest.
Holding the seed the garden keeper
is powerless to make it grow and no
force could unfurl the primordial leaf
any faster than the natural process
of reliable persuasion will permit.
He can only cultivate the conditions-
the finely tuned variables of freedom
in which buried things fulfill destinies-
to root himself in the soil and die
and wait for something mortal to sprout
by the virtue of a chosen weakness.
So he kneels to plant and pray.