I had come too long down my own way now To trouble with what signs dreamed appearing: The simple-minded purpose of an arrow An impertinence of trivial clarity 5 Pointed only to waves of vines that drowned it, Getting more vine-entangled the more I walked- Nature's green indifference a match to man's. Mourning doves cooed the midday shadows soft. I left all plans behind me and dropped intent 10 Back with those signs, and leaned my father's valise Initialed in cursive gold against the last. I would pick it up when I returned to reasons, Sagging in voluptuous vines with a leather sigh. Mourning doves cooed the gathering shadows soft 15 Under wavery arms of patchwork sycamores Deep in the broken bounty of the wood Where no sand-path of man or dog had stepped To interrupt the easy gloom of leaves; Indian Pipe and a fungus stump gave 20 A heavy odor the nose ignored. The mockingbird with enviable ear Talked to all his neighbors in their own voice, As if by their sharing some outward wail They shared some single mystery at source. 25 Half a sycamore had blown down dry Like a thrown blade-switch in an electric storm; Vines evinced no interest in its half-dead form, But rode the living half half-way high. There were whirlpools of vines in those woods, 30 Shunted hard aside all the time I walked them. A bronze creeper takes its own time in ascent, Using a tree's own strength against it, Snake-slow up to the tree's own lofty end, Like cloud gone everywhere or like climbing fire; 35 But more I think like fire than cloud Or perhaps a fiery cloud come down To threaten all that grew up from ground. The wires that fuse back from its leaves Tighten years against the tree-spine in a grip 40 To shadow-out leaves that block the creeper's light. A grip once light as feathers, lighter.- Yet shows the trick of closing tighter, Hand over hand, or leaf over leaf More properly, it makes its imagined height 45 Match the trunk's achievement grown up right. They share a center that discernment sees. But the outline, like a helix spun, begins To burr and blur like an old old man Who can't hold even his own old name in mind, 50 Until all the limbs lay overtaken By a wilder interposing dark of green That turns dry birdsnests out to ground Or catches in an interlace of palms Small-nippled nuts before the autumn-fall 55 Drops them to the danger of maturing. How many years had I grown outbound to here? I hear my own father laugh and shake his head At nothing I had thought, or at something So far back it was plain invisible to me. 60 Well, now perhaps I can sense the why: We had been let drop to grow, for reasons not Our own- chance, or even evil, occurrence With nothing of our own doing in it. We're left with nothing else to do but grow; 65 What better purpose has a laugh than sensing that? Among a friendly roundelay of fieldgrass, A sycamore has its life-plan laid out From the first frond of its setting forth, Unaware of how its reeled-in corkscrew 70 Waits to over-awe and overshadow all. The grasses murmur nothing all day but sun. Nor does the sycamore seem to posit How its holding out beneath that summer sun Provides just the slip of shade the creeper 75 In all its years of greenly slithering Has learned to need. Once I came upon a giant Sycamore sequestered in a neck of wood Crowded as town, so hazed-over with bronze Filaments root to crown, it seemed on fire- 80 The triumphal creeper self-inwound above Even the crown of the vine-engulfed tree. All the trees surrounding were backed away As their live skirts might catch- but the effect Was only the halo-emptiness of life 85 The dead tree had claimed in adoration of sun, The slow outward longing of love's eternal Intertwine of warmness and warmed being. Here was a love affair too cruel to countenance One side all terribly requited want, 90 The other too reserved to ever push, And that was another story out of life. I knew down in that those who would not stand Oftimes retained the power of hands And, seeming weak as lace, still could strangle. 95 This courtship would have no day in court; A long struggle, and a single end.- The corpse had a solemness, I'll give it that, The way a bonfire dies down to ashes And obedience. But it had no dignity, 100 Nothing of itself amid the choke and flame. Bole and limbs still held themselves, riddled through With spiny roots that cared nothing but to use. A squirrel confused the leaves for a desperate hour And then chewed clear. The creeper had no use 105 For birds, lightest true climbers of the wood, And to their coming down proffered a net. The creeper was everywhere and was everything. We do not know our purpose, but onward creep As a mood may creep day to day on fire 110 Behind our walls, knowing nothing but to creep. These flamy bronzes too, were too desperate Of their own old man's hairy grip and perch To hazard seed beyond their flame in flowering; What flowers came of that flame showed too poor 115 And too few to drop the match-head seeds. New life must only smolder here this season, However wary the trees of renewing smokes, Thrown scarves to scar and catch the throat, And envelope a head made blind to its own good. 120 The creeper, for all its bronze-fire threat, Had no enemy but itself, -heh, - And spent its life in extending tendrils Of itself, all green willfulness and dare Hurling its shapeless metaphor outbound 125 To some self-supporting taproot, to be That tree, that life, if but for a time- Stretching and warping its bare being To another's bones, the way any son Inherits his father's laugh, and in time 130 Has his humor, right down to the last laugh.
From the collection "Assembling the Earth"
Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]
More information available on gregglory.com.