Runner Beans

My runner beans are climbing

Upwards to the apex

Of their bamboo wigwam

Despite their name

They do not run; they climb

Athletes run and rivers run

We run, not fill a bath

We run, not manage a business

And Germans laugh that English noses run

My beans spiral around their bamboo stake

Some take a time to find their foothold

Their tender shoots flap around until

Like a blind man probing with his cane

They find a secure home on which to cling

Sometimes I help a wayward shoot

By guiding it to the nearest cane

I notice that all shoot spiral counter clockwise

Their genes are programmed thus

I wonder if the same applies in the Southern Hemisphere 

Or do beans climb clockwise in Australia?

I panicked when it appeared that the tip of one shoot

Had turned brown and dry

Was it diseased and dying?

Would all my wigwam beans suffer the same fate?

Happily on closer inspection

I discovered that the rotten tip

Was in fact an  unremoved remnant of a last year’s bean

Long dead after providing boundless fruit

But not discarded from this year’s cane

Oh joy, my crop will not be “has beans”!

All is happy again