Wandering

We didn’t come to walk a line.
To wander is the point, I think,
the rambling path of a vine.

Do you think your life runs straight?
Easy to forget the bends and twists
that subtly turn the path this way and that.

How tedious would be a way
that goes just as foreseen,
no relish arising from life’s surprises.

When a statue in a ruin wears away,
it wanders into an unknowable form
more curious than before.

Is attrition a kind of creation?
The shape of the Bristlecone pine
settles into new and unexpected beauty.

A pilot navigates trajectory
by detecting deviation and applying
course corrections constantly.

Wending our way,
we mend and cleanse as we meander,
snaking along like the vagaries of rivers.

©Susa Silvermarie 2026

* Methuselah is a 4,857-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva) tree growing high in the White Mountains of Inyo County in eastern California.