Ruth Li

VINE

After D.J. Savarese, "Passive Plants"

Listen to the audio version.

In its
   union
    of substance
     and spirit
its leaves and
     tendrils
     become
       entangled
its soul exposing
     what words
      can be writ
even as it reaches
  toward light,
       strangled

    Yet the vine
     resists,
      its threads
       unfurling
    as its fragile
       surface
     belies its roots
   its strength
       emanating
       from earth,
          hurling
      its parts outward
       with its labors
         and fruits

   Encircling
      natural forms
   with strict
   of history
    progress and
   regress
  yet in its constant
  upward
   expansion
beyond their grasp,
     the vine
     seeks to
     transgress

Even as
 the world                       transcend
   tugs
  as we ascend
    still
    do we strive                   transcend
   toward pathways
    that transcend

Ruth Li is a Ph.D. student in English and education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. My research investigates writing development and digital literacies. I also write creatively; my poetry has been published in the Wellesley Review and has won awards including the Nebraska Shakespeare Anne Dittrick Sonnet Writing Contest and the Wellesley College Ching Jen Lum Creative Writing Prize. The self-published sonnet collection from which this poem is drawn can be accessed here: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ruthli/index.html.