As for the Heart

I am come to the age  
of pondering my lastness:  
buying what seems likely  
my final winter coat at Macy’s,  
or when a glossy magazine 
(so very blithely)  
asks me to renew. As for  

my heart, that pixilated  
tweener, how long  
I’ve been required to baby  
her complaints,  
(unLOVED unLOVED),  

alarmed and stubborn clock, 
refusing to listen even as  
the more intrepid tried.  

Now, she mostly mutters 
to herself, though  
occasionally there’s  
some clanging, a tinny sound,  
like the radiator in a Southie  
triple decker, fractious as  
a pair of cowboy boots 
in a laundromat’s dryer.  

It’s always been  
this joke old people know— 
in such a state  
of nearly doneness,  
the world grows sweeter,  
as if our later days  
are underscored with music  
from a concerto’s saddest  
oboe hidden in the trees. 

Just today,  
while standing in the kitchen,  
my son complained nonstop  
about his AP Psych class  
while wolfing warmed up  
bucatini from a crazed,  
pink china bowl.  

Shiny, kvetching creature.  
Even if I could tell him  
what he doesn’t want to know,  
I wouldn’t. But now,  

the pissy storm that’s spent  
all afternoon flapping like 
a dirty sheet  
has wandered off 
to spook some other  
neighborhood. 

There’s one barbed weed 
pushing up greenly through  
my scruffy loropetalum. 

And it falls on me, this little  
cold rain the day has left. 

Credit

Copyright © 2020 by Erin Belieu. Originally published with the Shelter in Poems initiative on poets.org.

About this Poem

"Because I haven’t (yet) lost family or friends to the virus, and because I’m lucky to have the kind of work that allows me to stay safe inside my little bubble, I’ve been able to feel the especial tenderness of everyone and everything around me at the moment. And no doubt my son heading off to college soon has put me in mind of endings. It’s been an unintentional gift from the universe, sheltering with him, having this concentrated time together before he goes off into the world soon."
Erin Belieu