Lattice and vine,
this winter, bared so you
feared a hard freeze had killed it.
What passes for
cold in this latitude,
of course, took leaves to shrivel.
The stalks kept shreds
of bark, and shivered in
wind storms, but still lay as trained
up the stanchions
across the woven laths
and let in more cold, grey light.
Now summer rides
flurries of broad leaves
greening what light they allow
to filter near
the kitchen window. Small
fists of nodules depend more
ways than one on
the vine: the vine depends
on good water; we walk and
sit in cool green
depending on the grape
to take full sun above us
by day and still
when we sip tea around
night candles, we depend on
the leaves to breathe
for us under moving
stars the breaths we would breathe cooler
if we could. We
walk a day's heats and give
the roots water as we can,
spray, perhaps, the
dust from the leaves we can reach,
and pray for those beyond us.
R. S. Carlson
First published in Birmingham Poetry Review 5 (Fall Winter 1990):7.
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