Tag: tendril

The Vine That Tendrils Out Alone

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A certain kind of Eden holds us thrall.
Even the one vine that tendrils out alone
in time turns on its own impulse,
twisting back down its upward course
a strong and then a stronger rope,
the greenest saddest strongest
kind of hope.
~Kay Ryan from “A Certain Kind of Eden” from Flamingo Watching

This is the season for entwining enchantment.

Simply walking out in the garden in the morning, the tendrils are reaching out and grabbing onto my shirt and my jeans. If I stood still for an hour, they would be wrapping up my legs and clinging to my arms. There I would be, held hostage by these insistent vines for the duration of the season.

There are worse fates: a verdant Garden is exactly where we were placed to begin with.

The vines that don’t find a grab-hold, end up bending back onto themselves, curling back down the ladder they just created, sometimes knotting themselves into a nest. They wind up and down in nothingness and sadly cannot hold fast enough to be fruitful except creeping along the ground itself.

May there always be Someone Solid to cling to, to wrap around, to hold fast. May we once again know the glories of His Garden.

To Be Bound with Tiny Rings

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sweeterpeas

tendril

Here are sweet-peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
~John Keats

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I grew up watching sweet peas climb a trellis in our family garden. Their delicate tendrils did wrap clinging fingers around anything they could reach and grasp. The blossoms were too ephemeral to waste indoors for a vase on the table — the petals would droop and then drop within a day or so. They were meant to be appreciated right where they grew, so I would visit them regularly, breathe deeply in their midst to capture and keep their lovely scent with me as I went on about my day, leaving them waving their vines in my wake.

Some things are better left undisturbed, to flourish right where they have taken hold. In the case of sweet peas, if I had stood beside them long enough, the finger-like tendrils would have reached out and grasped me as well, climbing up my frame and wrapping their blooming fragrance around me, truly changing me forever.

And so it will be in heaven someday: we will be grasped and clung to with the sweet scent of everlasting love, never to be let go, and never again to be what we once were.

sweeterpeas