On leaving Israel after three years working with pediatric heart patients
Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872
I was quietly counting sunrises,
twisting and smoothing out those feelings
of being here and very far away…
My heart became a heart
when the shape of home exploded
into the blank geometries of loneliness.
I thought I'd missed it forever when
a bolt of familiarity I had never seen
was without explanation part of myself.
My heart became a heart
when the blankets were ripped off,
the alarm clock was buried in snow,
and it became a new question of
pump or freeze. Borrowing beats
from other hearts was plagiarism
for which I was expelled from life.
My heart became a heart
the moment I forgot I had one.
I stopped reading about it in old books,
stopped thinking so seriously about what life is,
Life itself confronting me, caressing and scolding me.
Tranquilizing reflections grotesquely disintegrated,
and clear roads to walk were on the other side.
Yes, my heart became a heart
when it knew its knowing to be wind
and its path wrapped around lime trees,
blossoms tinkling between the evenings,
sun exhaling back to his place.
My heart became a heart
when the music began swaying
sailor songs of another stern war,
erect anthems of another overcorrection,
history tacking forward like a drunk captain
toward an abyss I see with crystal brutality
in myself.
My heart became a heart
when the fluff was pounded out of it.
Dense feather-clouds of phrasal "faith"
were too thick to see for a while as
sheer caverns were gouged into place,
gleaming in darkness heavy with promises.
My heart became a heart
at the shattering of laws that
tattoo worth to my small bones,
as if "success" were ever successful.
The stars were popping like blisters,
radiating new salvations underneath,
pinpricks in the sky of unmuzzled joy.
My heart became a heart
when it understood it would never understand itself
perfectly, all those cardiac metaphors I assigned borders to
slipping the cage of any idea, off into thick sweet jungles
of what I feel but cannot say.
My heart became a heart
not when I sold it to those who would celebrate it
but gave it to those bereft of all happiness and
with no ability to repay. I lost what I thought
I had, thinking that was the end,
never plotting a beginning.
How was I sharing what I had nothing of
with those richer and poorer than me?
How was I hurt in self-protection
and healed in the act of healing?
In the act of finding, found?
And what now? What now?
Was my heart only a heart for a moment?
Does the plastic wrapper now fall back over my eyes?
Do I forget the steps of that wild and unscripted dance,
forget how to ice-climb fragile ecstasies of What If,
forget what I heard then and how I moved
in the beat of your love?
Tired. I am very tired,
and maybe this walk
to the green room
is after the show.
O heart!
Do not apostatize.
Do not forget.
Take the risk to go slow.
Take the risk to listen well.
Take the risk to go insane
with colorful thumping wings,
the unseen violent winter wings
you sensed growing softly once
like the smell of an old bookcase,
back when you were
Quietly counting sunrises,
twisting and smoothing out those feelings
of being here and very far away.
Comments