Man shaped out of mud And made to speak and love— Let's stick in him a little whisperer, A bucket with two holes. Let's give him the Great Deceiver, A blood-stone. A church with a vaulted ceiling Where the White and Blue Niles meet. A dog who cries after dark. Everyone has a heart, Even the people who don't. It floats up like a beached whale in the autopsy. The heart has no sense of humor. It offers itself piteously like a pair of handcuffs, And is so clumsy that we turn away. The past Is a quarryful of marble statues With heads and genitals erased, But the heart is a muscle made of sharkbone and mutters, Resting place softened with hay Where all the cows come home, finally.
Copyright © 2012 by Monica Ferrell. Used with permission of the author.