Mr Crowzen’s Yard

I never understood why the old man bent down so dutifully above the green
Preening like a crow on the crown of the hill, “Old Man Crowzen’s yard”
Pulling weeds

Sometimes, I guess, he was planting seeds
Then watering with the focus of a sieve 
Always calling forth dense green, incanting some mystery from the earth 

Indeed, he stewed it like a witch’s brew, the blades to hold the dew
Obsessed, he seemed, with that moving stream of water
In his tiny wizard's kingdom
When outside his walls a whole world wasted away for his lack of seducing it
Reducing it, as he did, to a patch of grass

But now, I understand:

If you can make one thing flourish in this strange world
If you can stand and say, I have power, before the sun fades
In this—a little kingdom of green, 
(No matter how small it is, that matters not a thing) 
It stings and stuns the sense we’re fading too fast 
It preserves the words we need to hold in all our unsaid selves

It delays the night with day  
And provides that prize we most covet:
A sense of harmony 

I know this, as I stand in my own yard, watering grass to green it, 
Preening as it lays down and lets me speak to it
Feeling the gentle stream that keeps me here and nowhere else—
Which may be life’s dearest trick
To be here now
And all while calling forth a shade of green
Which is to hold hope close, life’s second trick
Those two tricks the thing
So very close to being king