I finally have a poem that sort of goes with this piece.

                            Lifeline

How does it play?

What red square, what black square,

          what blind card drawn

                    marks a turn--

A plot point bouncing you this way or that

          a shoot, a ladder--

 Or does it glance off into no man's land

          like a ray of light

                    glinting off glass?

Or is it a slow veering?

Does it move with the crowd like a school of fish

          changing course with a flick of collective mind--

Or does it push against tangled constraint

          like the angry press against jammed traffic?

Does it grow like a branch maneuvering around

                    and even embracing its obstructions--

          sculpted, made intricate, made sinuous

                              by its obstacles?

Or does it reach like a tulip stretching for its sun

          unfettered by anything but its own longing?

Does it hitch and snag on a stranger's word

          or some odd thing discovered in a pocket?

Is it drawn through thick fog 

                    by the trembling wire of a voice

Or does it grope and flail and echo in a vast silence?

Is it blown like litter by mistral winds?

Or does it follow a path girded in concrete and asphalt,

          proscribed with guardrails, striping

                    and helpful signage?

Is it's mark upon the world

          the crush and fizz and void of a wave,

Or is it etched soberly, painstakingly and for the ages

                   in a granite slab?