…the out-of-control Virginia creeper
my friends say I should do something about,
whose vermilion went at least a full shade deeper
at the provocation of the upstart blue,
the leaves (half green, half gold) suddenly hyper
in savage competition with that red and blue—
tohubohu returned, in living color.
God’s not nonexistent;
He’s just been waylaid
by a host of what no one could’ve foreseen.
He’s got plans for you…
…it’s true that my Virginia creeper praises Him,
its palms and fingers crimson with applause,
that the local breeze is weaving Him a diadem…
~Jacqueline Osherow from “Autumn Psalm”
With what stoic delicacy does
Virginia creeper let go:
the feeblest tug brings down
a sheaf of leaves kite-high,
as if to say,
To live is good
but not to live—to be pulled down
with scarce a ripping sound,
still flourishing, still
stretching toward the sun—
is good also, all photosynthesis
abandoned, quite quits. Next spring
the hairy rootlets left unpulled
snake out a leafy afterlife
up that same smooth-barked oak.
~John Updike “Creeper”
The Virginia Creeper vine, its crimson leaves
crawl over the brow of our ancient shed
like a lock of unruly hair or a flowing stream,
a chaotic ruckus of color.
This humble building was a small chapel a century ago,
moved from the intersection of two country roads to this raised knoll
for forever sanctuary. It is befitting that every fall this former church,
now empty of sermons and hymns, weeps red.
Each winter the stripped bare vine
clings tightly through thousands of “holdfast” suckers.
The glue keeps the vine attached
where no vine has gone before.
Once there, it stays until pulled away;
it becomes an invincible foundation
to build upon in the spring.
Do not despair about the winter to come.
The Lord has plans and will not be moved
or ripped away,
even when His name is absent
from the public square.
He’s holding on, waiting on us,
waiting for the spring to burst forth again
and won’t ever, no never, let go.
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