For Terri Thornton

From the roots of its starting point, a wild grapevine stretches into space, elegantly finding its way through chaos. Its formal, linear beauty—all the delicate offshoots from the main line, which chose its path early on and grew with purpose—all that becomes clear and obvious in its dormancy, in its end, when the whole poetic arc of its existence may be apprehended. How many creatures were nourished by its fruit? How many songbirds built their nests from its bark? In the unfathomably complex system of nature, so many things have depended on the abundance of this generous pathfinder.

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