How my roots fandango,
shag down
dark as anchovy fillets
gibbet-curing
in the sun
or, wind-spurred,
dicker, dodder, swoop and dodge.
Birds wheeling above
like parasols
blur
the sun’s torrid obligato.
Soil humors me.
I really can’t complain.
It’s only that I hover
so unclad:
vines at peril,
flighty, without hitch.
I absorb what I can,
but rarely do my pendent shoots
touch down,
and what misery
when they nod
an inch
that might as well be an ocean
from pay dirt, and I crane
at my wit’s end,
unable to connect.
Spine anchored
in the plenary dust,
I could abide the wind
and hushed-up,
tolerate drab insects
needling my bark,
even brook
that indecent commotion
within me
that every winter renews.
But now and then, stateless
after a savage peace,
my dozy tendrils
quiver and flinch.
The soil begins to shudder.
I feel an urgent tugging at my cuff,
sudden, miraculous,
and know a root any moment
will come alive, steeled
by that slender, radical grip.