The Deciduous Kind Poem by Mark. A Heathcote

I stretched as ivy does, in all directions but one,
moving without grace, I struck out alone
across the endless wastes,
clinging feebly at first, slowly
finding my feet as all outcast feelers eventually do —
I'm more the deciduous kind. Doesn't bend, but breaks, truth to tell.
And yet, I climbed, bound tight, an orgy of eel-bodies
rising braided from a cesspit of sewage,
stripping it of oxygen.
The host fell by the wayside, hollowed out at the core —

The world was a forest, and I feared falling most of all —
lowly, lingering on the floor without sunlight,
without direction, no canopy in reach.

I searched within and found only a worm-eaten trunk,
putrid, that would lean and sway in the slightest storm.
My core felt nothing —
but for parasite roots, still tapping the rot for what little it could give,
angling skyward, the host buckling beneath my weight —
into the eternal darkness, trembling before one light.