I am in a blissful state right now, working on a new novel that I love. This is the excitement that was missing from the other project. I feel energized. I’ve addressed it in a backwards sort of way, creating characters and conversations first, which lead to the formation of a plot, which clarified a theme. In this muddy, gray winter, I am feeling like the bud on the branch.

Soon enough I’ll get to take a break from my rural idyll and visit my brother and the people I love in the place that made me. I get to touch that and then return. That is a gift. As I think about themes for my work and the work of others, I’ve also started thinking about what gets in the way and what I have learned thus far. The other night as I drove home from work, I thought about how to express this new (to me) way of seeing things. Maybe this has been obvious to all of you all along. I am slow. I am a late bloomer. And since my interpretive dance skills are really lacking, here’s a poem. C’mon. It’s the only way I know how to do things.

It Means Living without Fear

The heart

the metaphorical heart

(not the bloody engine racing and braking in its cage)

The heart

isn’t the shape of those candies,

those satin boxes of waxy chocolates,

those doodles in junior high spiral notebooks.

It is circular.

It is a circular magnet.

I don’t know if this is scientifically possible;

I don’t care.

Metaphors exist beyond all this,

beyond reason.

Reason is overrated.

Anyway.

The heart is a circular magnet.

It is open.

The open heart cannot break

because the good stuff is metal,

heavy fucking metal and micro-rolled shavings.

It sticks.

The good stuff runs at you and slams into your heart

and stays there.

Stays there.

Makes you strong.

Makes you vibrate higher than before.

Each bit adds up.

The bad stuff

(the negatives, the pain, the slings and arrows)

are not metaphorically metallic.

They flow right through, straight in and out.

That pain comes at you,

the headlights bearing down in the dark,

paralyzing and making you

think you belong in the dirt, the tarmac, the grit.

That pain makes you believe things that simply are not true.

No, but.

That garbage slips right through you and continues on its horrible way,

a way that isn’t your concern.

Your open heart is full,

full of loving metal shavings,

full of reflective elements.

Reflecting

Reflecting

Reflecting