How big is the heart?

Big enough, she said, to hold the universe, but not a singularity. A multiverse in verse, the pattern. Systole, diastole. The drum inside the drum, keeping time with the shore. The earth is our mother, the sea is our blood. How big? Big enough. There is so much to contain that the vessel capsized on a lonely shore. Enough to carry it across to the other side. Remember to bring honey cakes and coins, the river is asleep. Charon’s heart beating once every millennium, how big is his heart? The seas rose and no one remembered the honey cakes. The sea took her due. The river inside each of us carves a shore of grief and tears—the same as the ocean or blood. Can you cry underwater? Someone asks. Better to leave the unanswered questions for the city of the dead. They have time enough. They say the earth is resonating like a bell. Systole/diastole; Charon’s heart is beating a drum song, a tattoo of rhythm, life compressed, lived between the two beats of a wave. How big is the heart? Big enough. The elders are closer to hearing it, one step closer…they tell stories of when they were young. First job, first love. Their days carry the rhythm still. There is such a sweetness in the the room after they tell the stories and this room is filled with hearts so big the universe can’t contain them. So we write in verse, multiverse to Sinatra’s Very good year. And now that is enough to hold the world. Do we choose the size of our hearts? How do we measure the size of the heart. A beating heart.

1/21/2005 Writers’ Group