Flower Head

Perched on the high end of its

spinal stalk the brain blooms

like a pink cabbage rose

Peel back the blunt bone like a bud—

it will be meaty to touch, the

corolla folding in, folding in to echo

within the sepal skull

a blink of light, logarithms, a view

of ships in harbor, a word just now

rescued by memory, clipped arbor vitae

how it smells—spiced

Here God lives, burrowing among

the petals, cross-
pollinating. Here is Christ's mind

juiced, joined, fleshed, celled.

Here is the clash,

the roil, an invasion, not gentle

as dew; the rose is unfurled

violently until the scent explodes

and detonates in the air

And oh, it trembles—

thousands of seeds ripen in it as

it reels in the wind

~Luci Shaw