Broken hearts, coffee-numbed and busy,
Flow in and out of the pounding city.
Red-hot cars blaze down the road before splitting away,
Cascading through tree-trimmed lanes like blood in the veins.
Harsh words are shouted as horns blare-- they have somewhere
Else to be, as the drivers are somewhere
Else, inside themselves, where sick hearts stop beating
Or children fail tests with big red X's,
Or the water company shuts off their last chance
To scrub their bodies clean
Of the bosses' venomous words,
As the city's heat pulses, traffic oozes into hot sticky globs
Of exhaustion.
But the heart is not a machine to berebooted, nor is it glass to be broken.
It is a cracked collection of words and faces,
Sweat-beaded dreams and dust-coated places.
Though its delicate pieces shift day by day,
It resumes its awkward place as fire and rain,
Teacher and student,
Healer and sickness--
Doing its slow, shivering business
Far from soft cool kisses of sea,
Too close to sharp-fanged flames.
YOU ARE READING
Animal Emotion
PoetryThese are my poems about animals, with some about the human animal. Some of these have been published in local journals. Previously published poems: "Close-Up With a Giraffe" "The Blue Heron" "The Baby Bunny" "Tired Hearts" ...
