Heart, Where is Your Depth?

I.
Heart, where is your depth?
What happened to the vaulted rooms,
the caverns full of wonders?
I know they were once there.
I wanted to show everyone.
But I can’t find them now.
I hear a throb that says the blood still flows
but I feel no rush or coursing
In the silent chambers
the red river moves the life-gases along
and I trust its work
but no longer hear anything.

II.
Finger, hands, wrists
why don’t you clasp anymore?
Once you were strong and knew how to grasp
a wild goat, an angry child or a hammer.
But the strength has left you.
The flesh is thin. The bones are frail.
But I am not old.
Traitor. Weakling. Coward who dropped the tool
because he had no will to grip. I despise you.
You are good for strokes of empathy
but not the demands of power.
You serve in love but not in battle.
I look at you and wonder
how many soft betrayals you have known.

III.
Eyes, you are the windows to the sea.
You see the life the mind moves through.
Why can you no longer see your own beauty?
Why does the mirror always reveal another scar?
Why don’t you see the landscape textured on the skin,
the wisdom spun hard upon the forehead,
or the layered hair of decades?
Is your lens so old that it clouds your face?
Can you only see the body’s outlines lost in fog?
I stand by the mirror.
I watch the night tunneling deep into your eyes
far into your worlds without sky.


—Eric Nelson