The Vine

His wife and young son in his heart, the future riding his shoulders
he eagerly plowed up the weeds at the rate of four miles an hour,
shuttling across the field on his shiny bright red tractor.
The cornfield around him proudly shone in the sunlight
as he turned to look at it proudly reflecting his gaze
while the wind like a wave washed the field into motion.
A young farmer riding an engine could plow up the world
especially in June, in the morning, the sunshine thick in his pulses.
But he stopped at midmorning to stretch his legs and discover
a coiled vine snakelike climbing and choking a cornstalk,
he picked at it, tore it away, looped it tight in his knuckles
and saw that it made a green handle holding him to the earth.
He studied it for a moment as if he’d abruptly abandoned
his iron rooster to fight back the wilds with his hands.
He tested the torque of the vine, and the suck of the roots
tightening the strings in his forearm. As if they were equals
they faced each other, a man and a wild morning glory
each with his claim on the earth.
When the vine could hold on no longer it snapped off clean at the ground
the white root writhing as the taut green curls
slowly untwisted slackening their pull on his fingers
and he shook them off with the thought, it will grow back again,
the root got away from me and its life is still there.
He turned to the power tied to the ends of his levers
to his own ways and emotions as live and green as the cornfield’s
thrusting into the air in bannered flowers of existence
while under his feet coiled a strength he had not overcome.