Vows
53 Vows The neighbors’ rhododendron seems to have forgotten how to bloom: plates of polished leaves and, in the center, upright buds, wrapped, muscular, not going anyplace, like high school linemen, tall on the field, who never graduate. Across the road, those rhododendrons wave their Kleenex-white diplomas right on schedule. Then, one opens here, midnight red. Those buds weren’t linemen, they were nuns, closing their hands around the rosary, renouncing everything 54 until those beads murmured their way out, velvety, baroque, a color stolen from a Spanish church in Cuernavaca, more lush for waiting, passion stored in curving sepals to let it ripen. What vows do they intend to keep? The cloister’s open now, tongues and palms and petals all unfolded, inviting anything with wings. ...
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