in the sun and in the dirt

how our hearts do slowly, on their own.
tiny growing things, pressing upward through white-flecked soil
and out of claustrophobic tombs toward sunlight
watered in words and visions

i hope that this is the way--
we find them sprouting up and out at
bach at lunch hour, peeping from under
keyboards writing poems and from behind
camera lenses taking photos. some have
a sort of smothered beauty, others a tough green resilience;
still others the pale white of moon or skin
and those are the most fragile, but easily the
most beautiful to someone like me.

they're so easily broken, these vegetable hearts.
cracking as watery stalks of celery.
but like an underground network of roots so entrenched
they'll quickly spawn a new seedling, nourished by mystery or music,
to be broken again or to spend all its life desperately learning
to flower, opening petal by petal until
maybe for those days of radiance
that is all there is and ever was.