The Sure Roots

The Sure Roots
Lesley Clinton

Unkempt, unbridled vine: some days it goes
leggy with wilderness. On other days
it languishes, wilting inside the house.

You find it threaded through thin floorboard cracks
and veined along the undersides of eaves.

It tangles in the junk drawer, twists itself
into the pile of dry-rot rubber bands,
curls around a nail gone white with sheetrock,

no picture now to hang. Although wary
of the order in its tendrils, you tend
it anyway, working in that early
way—with pen, paint, proof, song, or pinch of salt—
to clear a growing space. Soon, leaves unfurl,
gleaming mischief, trekking up barren walls.

To tend a calling means to putter, pore,
tinker, and dive—to lean horizonward,
not sure what fruit waits, dew-still, in the grove
hugging the soul's wild banks. The roots, surely,
have found their reservoir in hallowed ground.

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Lesley Clinton
Poet & Author

Lesley Clinton has won awards from the Poetry Society of Texas and the Houston Poetry Fest. Her poems have appeared in publications such as Ever Eden, Mezzo Cammin, Texas Poetry Calendar, Gulf Stream Magazine, and By the Light of a Neon Moon. Her chapbook, Calling the Garden from the Grave, is available from Finishing Line Press. Connect at lesleyclinton.com.

Photography by Jessica Pineda