Thin vines stretch across the honeycomb of air

climbing the chicken wire of the garden fence

with sticky new fingers

in a spiderweb of green.

In one gap, where – finding nothing to hold on to – the plant clearly doubted,

it encountered only another of its own arms

and the two wound round each other

and spiraled momentarily toward the sky

before pushing away,

leaving a perfect coil in the middle of nothing.

Despite this near miss, this almost fall,

the vine keeps reaching out from its most recent anchor,

groping blindly in the mystery of time and space,

trusting that eventually it will reach something,

if only itself.

 

I admire the pea plant.

It must take so much hope to wake up in the dark,

buried in the soft dampness of the soil,

and believe in the sun.