Growing Pains

Carlos, the aloe,

Strains desperately deeper

Into his slumbering soil.

Running repeatedly into wall

After plastic wall with his

Hungering roots,

Twisting and turning

At ninety degree angles

To curl curiously, continuing

To dowse for ever more water,

More room, more space

Until they tangle

Around one another,

Hopelessly lost,

Desperately confused,

And ever so thirsty.

He shivers the shiver

Of claustrophobic houseplants

With their cages

and their cramping roots.

When their heads are

Free to swivel and spy

And breath deep,

Gasping breaths.

Where there is all the air

The sky can hold

But still there are walls,

Ever walls surrounding them.

He reaches slowly,

Hesitantly, over to

His potted cohort

Cecil, of an unidentified genus,

Who twirls to face the

Mobile sun. Ever running

From their upturned faces,

Ever racing away

From them both.

Though Carlos is

Too slow for such theatrics,

Too heavy and rigid

To dance the delicate ballet

His friend daily makes

He takes comfort in his presence.

Carlos prefers to calm his mind

To meditate on life and hum

A dry, subvocal drone

To remind him of deserts

And dusty red ground

That cracks and shifts.

Under sand and shale

He can delve down,

And even if he hits the water shelf

He can still go out

For miles in every direction.

Carlos dreams, when he can,

Of growing a thousand meters tall

So he can shade the roofs of houses

Rather than the other way around.