passiflora

“...the bloom is clasped by 3 leafy green bracts, 5 pearlesque petals, a fringe like corona of white tipped rays, flagged with 5 antlers or stamens,”  I read...

It started with a large bowl containing forty-six shriveled maroon brown (ugly) palm-sized fruit in a wicker bowl on my kitchen table. That day I wrote my first published piece purely inspired by not knowing what to do with those wrinkled empty fruit, with myself, with my story. Lazy Susan didn't even know what to do with them, I asked and she just spoke in circles. The pursuance of purpose with passion(fruit) began with those little spent and shriveled fruit. The time was ripe. Since then, I have hidden and sprinkled little seeds in each poetic line, a memento sometimes I only know. Passion is preserved in my pages, not as obvious as photos in a scrapbook, but stashed between If & A Very Minor Poet Speaks. In the art of Oshibana time still becomes brittle. 

It could have been Dickinson that made me do it, or inspired me-alas her sadness never infused my muse. Besides we had not even been formally introduced academically. She seemed to see the same things in the garden, as the way one reads the sky, we both speak poetry.

 Instead of grapes, I planted a single passion fruit vine, on a pilgrimage of its own, running east to west along the fence line, signifying the borderlands, sharing its own passion with the sun.

No sour grapes, I am not whining, but the passiflora is out of control, overzealous and runneth over.

The passion fruit is a vigorous, climbing vine that clings by tendrils to almost any support. It can grow 15 to 20 ft. per year once established and must have strong support.

–Passionfruit

That is how a passionflower ended up pressed in between the pages of my grandmother's 1936 edition of the Best Loved Poems of the American People (no further comment on the content selection). I do not know why I robbed this fruit of its seed, cryogenically frozen in a wax paper sheath, a plan aborted, its architecture in perfect symmetry...the Holy Lance of leaves accented by tendrils or tamed tails, 10 virginal milk quartz petals as pillars, 10 faithful apostles guard the crown of thorns. Heaven and Purity, blue and white, fire and ice, behind lilac hued velvet drapes, yellow fireworks accent flashes of light.

The flower has been given names related to this symbolism throughout Europe since that time. In Spain, it is known as espina de Cristo (“Christ’s thorn”). German names include Christus-Krone (“Christ’s crown”), Christus-Strauss (“Christ’s bouquet”), Dorn-Krone (“crown of thorns”), Jesus-Leiden (“Jesus’ passion”), Marter(“passion”) or Muttergottes-Stern (“Mother of God’s star”).

–Passionflower: Etymology and Names (source: http://signum-crucis.tumblr.com/post/23014727480/passion-flower-passiflora-symbol-of-christs)

I see now why one would like to preserve life, preserve energy mid-life, like passion interrupted, full and pregnant with expectation, abundantly awaiting night to shape shift in peace,

Letting go, forgetting all you know about the natural course of things, it's all the same and doesn't change the outcome, unless you've been interrupted by the existence of infinite possibility, unpredictably. Passion possesses. 

And that gentle hand of fate, the nudge in a direction, can be a push, a shove, a pull, a punch. A gentle hand can be made into a fist. We stand up to change, not letting the wild beast order us around, even knowing the beast is trying to scare you into a more beautiful you, we cringe at this reflection, we could fail. Change takes us to a new place we think we've never seen, but it knows us, has our placard and makes us feel dumb, Hello my name is Stationary.

I built this intricate and dynamic machine called daily life, I am its humble servant, I obey.

I only hope to be preserved one day myself, not by Botox, like the passion flower of poetry, the passiflora of faith, the seed of inspiration and the serum of my stimulation. Oozing with potential, already hidden in history, I write as though nobody's reading, I press flowers for all they are worth, for those that give a Dickinson. 

1st image of Julia Margaret Cameron [Public domain or Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Pasion flower at garden gate.