This Heart -a poem

This Heart — a poem

by Jane Tawel

This Heart

By Jane Tawel

September 7, 2020

*

This heart,

I can not hold.

Its beat escapes me,

Like the sound of a diffident drum.

*

And yet, I long to look somewhere,

to find the source.

In my mirror, perhaps?

Or in the stars or skies, 

or someone’s smile?

In the crevices of my childhood,

awash with bits of benevolence

amidst the scars 

deeper than the chasms of remembered wounds?

*

Or does this heart move and bleed apart from me;

a willing and unwilling partner,

a sometimes pacemaker of my soul,

keeping alive that which measures the motions 

echoed timelessly and in my time,

 in the clefts of consciousness

 chalked with crumbs

of stories, myths, and songs?

A heart may be, as one for all and all for one,

for heroes, villains, and all children born?

*

This heart, hidden in

The girth of eternity — 

I want to wrest it

From my chest

And see there in the last moments,

 the pulsing light of

That organ that best encompasses

The meaning of myself.

*

Not half a brain between us;

my heart and I yearn,

Not for grand ideas or vast knowledge,

But for the scratched-out wisdom

That comes only

With the pain of loss,

The shortness of the season,

And the hope of love.

*

This heart

That throbs foolishly

without sense;

calls to me to free it from

the prison of myself;

opening up riches

from my chest

to bleed its treasures elsewhere.

© Jane Tawel 2020

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