On the Way Home
Absolutely stifling
on the way home
in a train car mass,
when en masse
the congregation
erupts onto
the pavement
and pursues
independent prayers
for safe travel.
I commit my gaze,
unflinching but ceded,
to the lower left
quadrant of
my visual field,
the safest
spatial corner,
I have determined,
allowing noticeable
aversion while
affording an ample
peripheral circumference
and ambient awareness,
when into frame floats
an innocuous vine
locked in a married
coil with a chain link,
sporting five-toed
leaves and galactic
blooms of bombastic
flamboyance.
Passion flowers are
shy summer children.
They dare only
a few days of bloom.
Maypop, marajuca,
water lemon.
Spanish missionaries
employed the flowers
in their teachings
about the crucifixion,
bodies fixed models
to model salvation.
