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.