Tendril

“Now you are tangled up in others and everything you do has some weird failure in it.”
Rumi

I am tangled in family, the wild geese
Or were they sandhill cranes flying in formation?
Their wings rhythmic resonance, while everyone
I love flaps in different, difficult ways.

Sometimes I fly on one co-dependent wing,
Frida Kahlo the day his affair is discovered.
On the other I flap independently. I am that
Woman alone, Georgia to the tenth power.

Some days I need unceasingly, like prayer.
I love this tangled up love-life of family.
The drama, the small violins. I hate the tangle
Of family, my forehead creased like a dollar bill.

I used to cry a lot. Tangled threads of tears
Stitched me from one man to the next. Now I do
All my man work with on difficult model. Darling,
I want to say but only if it’s ironic not corny.

This leads me to tendrils. They live for tangle
The biologic curl, runner and desire. Morning
Glory and honeysuckle. Sometimes I untangle
Them and redirect to trellis or string. All I can do.

Now you have experienced the exigencies of family
And each moment may be doomed. I don’t know
What “exigency” means or how to spell it.
We have to reach for what our mind can wrap around.