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Pardon
What I’ve learned since letting
the landscape I’m in charge of go
beyond what No Mow May prescribed
is that the vines are conscious
and have waited like who knows
how many generations of cicadas
for this string of days
in which no implement, no blade, no whirling
length of plastic string disturb
deep worship of the sun, a spring
and summer’s worth of reaching
toward the fullness of assembly.
I’ve learned that if I let the wild
grapevines, tendril after tendril, climb
the whole way up the dignified American
red maple, they will spread and grow
fanatical and shade her, weigh her
down and stress her, kill her even
as the finches peck grapes
in the waning of my lifetime.
So I take my ersatz Crocs off
in defiance of my wife who claims that I
do nothing and walk past the staghorn
sumac kingdom, through the high
grass, stepping lightly, on
the lookout for amphibious
impressions, stopping underneath
the branch where contact first was made.
I hold between my fingertips
a tendril curled three times around
a branch tip and see tenderness instead
of strangulation, curiosity instead
of imposition. All the cultures
have a tale about a stairway, ladder,
vine, tree, tower, something that’s the way
from earth to the divine, the other
side, the magical dimension
infinitely hovering above
our always ending own,
whatever you prefer
to call transcendence.
Tony Hoagland said, before
his pancreas was overwhelmed,
you have to decide what
you’re willing to kill.
So I let go and touched the horseweed
and the bee balm on the way back
as I thought about the pardoned
laboratory chimpanzee in puckered awe
as she looked at the unbarred blue sky
for the first time in her life.
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