Beside the long hedge on my parents' drive,

where the gravel waited daily for their tires

to crunch it open, in the narrow band

of earth along the hedge that kept the loam's

thick secret from the shifting sun, I knew

a purple violet. It always grew there,

hanging its knotty shoulders in the shade

of large, more splendid leaves, its crumpled head

releasing toward the earth.

One day I crouched

to find its eye much closer than before

and stared inside. My own eye was lost

in the echoing hold of the raw deep I saw,

though my hands held back inside the driveway world

that slowed its pulse around me as loud sun

shattered all the gravel into shade

and stroked the earth. The middle of the violet loomed;

its heart was peeking into me to hold

me like a violet, too. As its yellow, strong

throat turned to me and opened like a door,

interior light poured from a silent sun,

flooding my face and choking my eyes, until

I stopped looking in violets.

From Eve