Heart

What remains we take to heart,

to the place where it will not wither,

to the reliable red core,

always, always away from weather.

As we take the remains we take ourselves;

it follows as surely as the splitting

of outer bark and the steady age

that seeps inward. The heart stops

the simple return to earth,

the soil's slow renewal.

The heart stops the ravenous beetle,

the reaching threads of fungi,

the constant chafing wind.

To say the heart is a holding place,

a vault of oil and heat

awaiting resurrection, is to say:

we are more than we seem;

that within us, where we store

the remainder of our lives

in the chest hardened and tough

as this gnarled pine knot,

is a smoldering memory of fire

too safe, too contained to burn.