THE VINE WRAPS ITSELF

The vine wraps itself around my arm blades

Whitman liked to call leaves poke through

my toes Iʻve taken apart the word sedentary

and found 27 wordlings infants swaddled in neat

rectangles of paper torn from the word of the day

calendar each morning if only this were stillness

of the revolutionary steel spindle sort thoughts

ebb and flow far too much and the FedEx man

is on a first name basis if I were to tug myself

awake what then this collective uncertainty

has subsumed itself into my dreams a sign

surely that this isnʻt going away soon and the body

politic will have difficulty absorbing the impediment

although my core belief in the existence of higher

power without name without end amen lends itself

to the theory of absorption absolution by absorption

absolute with all the requisite chanting and madness

they say the first day of autumn came and went

this week which means itʻs still fall

in the vernacular my teaʻs still hot

the morning filled with tradwinds determined

to pass through and leave nothing behind

yes yes things are still open or closed

some lines some waiting the getting and spending

rich with disparities I heard a landlord

shot his tenantʻs dog to get him to leave

you wonʻt find the word leave in sedentary

but you will find rent at this point

I am looking up the name of this climbing twisting

manifestation of life force the green fuse

on fire in the crook of my elbow pushing

pulling in the name of the green tide of late

growth after the fires of summer tugging

entwining it is nature holding on to my arm

I grab a pen with my free hand grateful 

for a soft kiss inside this embrace write

an awkward love poem as dawn breaks