4.06.2017

This is how my heart works, you see?

There is a white stone cliff
over a dropping slope
sliced along with bare trees.

In the center of the cliff
is a round dry fountain of polished stone.

By seizing my whole body up as I clench my hand
I am able to open the fountain
into a drain, revealing below it the sky,
the trees, a brown and uncertain ground.
This is how my heart works, you see?
This is how love works?

Have some sympathy for the great spasms
with which I must open myself to love
and close again, and open.

And if I leapt into the fountain, there is just no telling:
I might sever myself clean, or crack the gold bloom of my head,
and I don't know what uncertain ground I might fold on like a sack.

[Max Ritvo {1990-2016}, 'Crow Says Goodbye', from Four Reincarnations]

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