Outside in the garden
There’s a Passion flower vine
Its little green tendrils
Have curled here and there
Where the shoots are fullest
Lushest, most verdant 
They burgeon and grow
Weaving circles of rapture
Until they’ve spun around
Seven times
Lighting up the chakras of life
And then just like that
Their work done
Of dancing in the sun
They fall

Inside the house
There’s a woman
Her hair
Is tied up in a bun 
She’s on the run
With little tendrils escaping 
At the nape of her neck
She’s rushing upstairs
There’s a toddler emergency 
And then she races like the wind 
Into the kitchen
To make breakfast 
And then she’s on the run again
Appointments, to-do lists, errands 
To complete 
And then back to cook and clean 
To feed and coddle, kiss a bruised knee

The hours weave their set design
Finite, regimented, organized  
But she has no sense 
Of their texture or lines
The day is done and finally 
She sits down for a while 
Soft tendrils forming 
At the nape - one, two, three
I hold my breath 
I count the whorls in the curls 
The longest one has six
I look away 
A little thought flits up to me 
Unexpectedly, a sign
Whispering secrets I don’t want to hear 
Of endings on the whorl-bearing vine

She smiles at me tiredly 
I wish, I wish fervently 
That the curls that gather
Loosely around her neck 
Is just hair soaked in sweat 
In the labour of love 
I pray, I pray silently
Into the depths of whatever’s out there 
God, the universe, ethereal energy
For the moisture laden curls to weave 
Their mystical circles for a few more years
Until they attest
To a life well-lived, joyfully 
Until they wear their silver-grey majesty 
Before they finally
Unspool in eternal rest.