This Heart — a poem

“Chasm” by Swissendo is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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,