Heart Attack (a Sestina)
What angelic chorals sing?
These messengers of heaven
Whose words are none of earth
Rising like mists amid the mountains
Rolling down to pastoral valleys
Stirring my fragile heart
My sullen, throbbing heart
Mumbling, for it can't quite sing
Its beat more full of valleys
Than peaks toward heaven
I miss those tracings in the shape of mountains
Which anchor me to this earth
Sweet, sweet earth
How you fill my heart!
Your noble, snowy mountains
Rising proudly to sing
At the feet of heaven
I long to see your valleys
To lay again in flowered valleys
Smelling the rich, black earth
Of my own personal heaven
Heal you traitorous heart!
I long to shout, to sing
Echoing from the mountains
Where are my mountains?
My rolling valleys?
The monitor, its dirge to sing
Strengthening my tether to earth
Even as my woefully tired heart
Slips to heaven
To forestall heaven
I labor to move mountains
As a constellation of disks record my heart
Etching flat valleys
Confirming i am still of this earth
With only a beep to mournfully sing
Each lull-to heaven, then up from the valleys
Drawn back to mountains and earth
As I wait for my heart to once again sing
poem by John Christensen
Added by Poetry Lover
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