Like Us
Tendril moves
inexactly toward light
as if it sees the streaky sky
through bracken
from its dead-end cranny
and in a dark corner
of the forest’s horizontal
understory a sapling.
Can tendril know
what it does?
Revolving round one stick
for half an hour, sometimes
letting go and refastening
as if undecided,
then turning toward anything
with a smattering of light,
bending vertically downward
to that object, then toward its own stem,
and contracting them spirally —
for scaffolding? Comfort?
If tendril clasps nothing,
it will wither — no longer
the small, created thing
like us
metamorphosed into a branched
organ to climb
and carry other leaves
to eat the sun.
Would it want
the knowing?