poem

Drawbridge

The heart has one job.

It just beats.

It never rests.

Thankless reliable pump,

Workmanlike, diligent.

I’ll feel your pulse

Or lay my head across your chest

But no one likes to see it,

Strange subterranean animal

Wriggling rhythmically 

Just before it leaves its womb.

Then we imbue it with so much more:

Strength, resiliency

Dutiful in the face of futility.

At some point it has to stop.

We can’t tell it not to. 

I guess it has us in a bit of a bind

when you really think about it

So it doesn’t hurt to pay our respects .

Why does the heart represent love, though?
Why do we say I heart you?

It isn’t true what we draw, 

Those red symmetric silphium shapes.

Our hearts are formless clenched fists.

We ought to be thanking the diaphragm instead.

Similarly muscled,

Less glamorous, more striated,

Flat and ray-like,

Just as unbidden,

The perilous rampart between heart and gut

That drives us to breathe.

To speak

To sing 

To swoon

To say I love...

When I haven’t seen you

In so long

And there you are

Standing right there 

In front of

While throat narrows

Chest collapsing 

Forgetting to breathe

Until I remember that

It was never up to me.

The diaphragm lowers 

Like a drawbridge

And I’m full of air, floating again,

Crossing over again

To the place where I always knew you’d be

11/15/21