Life Support
When I was five the guy next door
had lived to be a hundred and four.
I would play with that sly old man
with his Civil War songs and wobbly hands.
I knew his house, his things, his name
and I never won a checkers game.
Before he died, when I was nine,
he asked to see me one last time
I stood beside his bed and wept;
straight into my heart he crept.
He now smiles and brings his tales
to my pulse beating through his sails.
I smile back with feigned finality
and humbly grant him immortality.
The mortal heart is a rhythmic gem,
an aortic life support system
that sustains the lives of others who might
instead bleed out into the night
of unfinished smiles and psalms unprayed.
The heart defines that masquerade
and reminds us of the pleasant cost
of breaking vows and love’s labors lost.
So many souls rely upon me
begat in the ventricle of memory.
If I can pass them onto you,
for a generation or even two,
then I can creep (with grinning face)
into an extra-corporeal place —
the atrium where my children play
and sing my sonnets of yesterday.
© Gazzelle
July 18, 2009.
Adding your comment: