Is Only

The heart is a small animal packed in ice,
salted and swaddled and sailed away,

in the human being,
mostly, before leaving home.

Evolutionists would say
fear is a throwback of cave days
when we had instincts protecting
us from risky behavior.

Now it’s just a cold cloth wrapping us blind,
making us all madly implausible.

Is there a difference between
the broken heart of a woman and that of a man?
What does it look like anyway,
the heart that is broken?

Don’t say you don’t believe.

We think of it as cracked,
but there are other ways of being broken.

People die from a heavy heart,
the big pump in our middle,
hunkering away,
can’t keep on with all that weight.

I think of it sometimes,

as a listless giant
with a woman’s conscience, even in a man.
But, then,
I never believed
in the idea of men and women.

So a giant in my middle is only a stone’s throw away.

Comments

Popular Posts