Your Heart is a River

YOUR HEART IS A RIVER

You have suffered
with false winter,
and nothing can be born
of unmoving ice.

You nurtured your precious perceptions
atop sheer cliffs, high-cold
and alone,
like a mother glacier,
fearing the time of calfing,
safe
in your isolation.

But no longer,
for I have the trapper's privilege
of pulling out
that one lethargic log
from the frozen jam of trees
over your heart;
and that gray pond,
deep as a fjord,
that lies glass smooth behind,
has begun to thaw,
ripple, and move.

Lady,
I offered you
the flame of language
and you joyfully plunged it
into your bosom of snow
rolling up clouds of steam
into the still air.

Soon,
big pieces of yesterday
will run hotly down
your cheeks of stone,
and they will start to take form;
first a puddle,
then three,
then a stream
soon to be
a wild racing river,
spreading outand
pulling at everything
on its banks,
swollen to flood stage,
with half a life's memories
spilling, rushing, then boiling out
in a tempestuous torrent
of words,
of images,
of tears.

Please embrace it;
poetry,
that sacred place
where words come together
with other words.


Glenn Buttkus 1987