The Heart and What We Mean By It {a #poem}

So.many.things

Securely tabled, the body

awaits a scalpel ready to

move in. Sure-handed surgeon,

knowing aorta versus vein,

cavity vis-à-vis chamber,

approaches life-saving

infinitesimally. 

He leaves the stories just below,

housed within the heart's memory

as it courses, pulses, blood-red notes

wholly clutched by invisible hands. 

Delicate machineries monitor
blood, opaque as merlot, up, out

and back again. A rush of oxygen

sluices the brain, ferries golden

cells to the shore of healing.

Surgeon is pleased, chest

swelling with each

suture, clean as a textbook.

Attendants take note. 

Sheltered in sleep, the frail 
organ pounds, resounds, 
recording days and choruses
as gray matter conversations
collect, silent but particular

as autographs, ciphered,

seared on the soul. Cached

messages fuel this body

electric, signaling breath

as spirit awakens, stretching

this muscle of memories

cloaked in skin. ¹

                     “delicate machineries” phrase from Anne Overstreet

………..

This past July my husband & I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary and we were showered with greeting cards from friends and family. One in particular made me nearly weep with joy (it was from one of my children). I do cry more easily these days. Perhaps it’s just me getting older or God is actually turning my heart more and more into a heart of flesh, restoring feelings that have been buried deeper than I know.

I thought about the miracle of neuroplasticity in brains, and wondered in my journal the next day, “What do hearts have? Cardioplasticity?” Perhaps. I’m going with perhaps.

1. The Heart and What We Mean by It is in my new book of poetry, Mining the Bright Birds: Poems of Longing for Home, available here or wherever books are sold.