Today I only want to think about vines,
the way they travel like snakes with spider fingers
feeling their way forward, sometimes planning for the light
sometimes just staggering around.
They can have leaves, even fruit
and then let all of it go
becoming stiff threads, bone grey and pale brown
clutching to trees and brick houses,
claiming everything as their home.
Some of them are dying away and giving birth at the same time.
Why isn’t everything a vine? Why don’t we all move like vines?
I want to be vine.
I could let an arm drop off and pop out a new one,
grow fruit from my face to feed birds that nest in my body.
I know adulthood wants me to think about cars, food, and work,
but vines are so wondrous - so ancient and so much more true
than anything we create.
After the dinosaurs died vines took over the land, surviving in the tiny spaces that could hold life back then.
Divine wandering hands, they held the world together for millions of years until big life, green life, bumbling life, could return again.
Maybe I am vine.
Maybe my life wanders looking for the light, letting parts of me die away that need to die, bearing fruit to feed others so that I might feast on their company.
I am a vine today, and I have found purchase in you.
