My heart is a tin shed

It's raining raining raining. I found this poem on the Writer's Almanac this morning, after a friend pointed me there for another one (which I guess I didn't like so much - sorry, John!). I am often distracted by the meaning I find in little hidden things, like I can't stop thinking about the lettuce plants at the beginning of this novel I've been reading. Hello? I like taking pictures of things funny ordinary things for this blog, too. I think it's how I think about preaching, too, and churches - that every thing and person and place has a hidden heart and a way it is loved by God and called to be in the world, and a hundred different ways to interpret that call.

This poem turns the human heart into a hidden, dark, messy little thing, a way I've never thought of my heart before. I love it. But I can't get blogger to show the tabs - so, I'm sorry Suzanne Cleary! To see her poem in the right formatting, click here.

Echocardiogram

How does, how does, how does it work
so, little valve stretching messily open, as wide as possible,
all directions at once, sucking air, sucking blood, sucking
air-in-blood
how? On the screen I see the part of me that always
loves my life, never tires
of what it takes, this in-and-out, this open-and-shut
in the dark chest of me,
tireless, without muscle or bone, all flex and flux and blind
will, little mouth widening, opening and opening and,
then snapping
shut, shuddering anemone entirely of darkness, sea creature
of the spangled and sparkling sea, down, down where light
cannot reach.
When the technician stoops, flips a switch, the most
unpopular kid in the class
stands offstage with a metal sheet, shaking it while Lear raves. So
this is the house where love lives, a tin shed in a windstorm, tin
shed at the sea's edge, the land's edge,
waters wild and steady, wild and steady, wild.

by Suzanne Cleary, from Trick Pear. © Carnegie Mellon University Press