| What you said I shattered was the window
but we both know what you meant. I can’t recall a single meadow that didn’t slow my pulse.
Though you are far you are on my wing: you are the sight of an apple in the bathroom
or oils unintended for a wood floor. A fence ran the length of a field, between two trees
so that, in snow, it looked like stitches or a fallen rope ladder. Did you know
that three hundred years ago the heart was a furnace? At this point what else can I do
but follow the precedent I’ve established? Choose one of the following: at Monticello,
the turnips gave me a toothache, or at Red Hook, the red bees. Will you laugh if I say, I
beat my heart into a red caul of sentences? Near the pond I lifted a rock and found life
under it crowded with so many urges. To see if it’s possible to dig a grave, today I took
a shovel to the field. It is possible and surprisingly easy to dig a grave! Over coffee, on the phone,
I said to you, it took trillions to prop up the markets, but what I wanted to say was, I have
beaten my heart into a red caul of sentences.   Copyright © 2014 by Robert Ostrom. Used with permission of the author. | 
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