how our hearts do slowly, on their own.
tiny growing things, pressing upward through white-flecked soil
and out of claustrophobic tombs toward sunlight
watered in words and visions

i hope that this is the way--
we find them sprouting up and out at
bach at lunch hour, peeping from under
keyboards writing poems and from behind
camera lenses taking photos. some have
a sort of smothered beauty, others a tough green resilience;
still others the pale white of moon or skin
and those are the most fragile, but easily the
most beautiful to someone like me.

they're so easily broken, these vegetable hearts.
cracking as watery stalks of celery.
but like an underground network of roots so entrenched
they'll quickly spawn a new seedling, nourished by mystery or music,
to be broken again or to spend all its life desperately learning
to flower, opening petal by petal until
maybe for those days of radiance
that is all there is and ever was.

i close my eyes on the night
knew you when your skin glowed with
grey-bright, black ink pulses
of celestial brilliance

i reach up to write with stars' light
tracing pathways through milky clouds

i want to feel small and cold and connected
a smooth rock shaved by river's rush
flail of the current--held tight by gravity

i will open myself again to a moment
fireflies and the smell of fireworks
stretched on a blanket in heaven's cradle,
alone--not empty--and touched by everything,

tail lights want escape and honk frantically
i am above it all, and in it
spend each minute counting one blade of grass
in strobing, exploding light
trees scratching the darkness, aching again
to know when dawn will break open the night

am i paid to believe what they believe?