1 minute read
On tendrils
“Isn’t it a good thing” my sister said
“that biology is opposed to efficiency.”
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We were discussing tomatoes and interplanting.
Isn’t it a good thing when our mass
production and straight lines
are interrupted.
There is such a thing as ecology.
Even tomatoes are hungry for friendship.
To my shame in school I scorned biology
the naming of things without edges
the remembering of interrelations
the lack of straight lines
the unlogic of it.
It is so much easier
to work with dead things.
I thought I could glory now in biology
walking the roadside grown over with brush.
Look at the way the vines twist into each other
in sheer exuberance for growing in the burbling world.
Look at the way the tendrils venture the air in curlicues.
It’s called circumnutation
the way they look for a friend.
Isn’t it a good thing
that growing things do not go in straight lines.
The wet in that grey sky
gave my hair a rampant frizz.
I had the same tendrils
curling and twining the air.
Here is my own biology.
It is so much harder to say Isn’t it a good thing
that we do not grow in straight lines.
