THE ECHO OF LOVE

They send me to the hospital
for an echocardiogram so they can see
inside my heart. Lou, the technician

tells me the heart is like a house
with many rooms and this will show them
the size of the rooms

if they have cracks in the ceiling, leaks
in the pipes, a damaged sun porch. I can hear
whooshing, see my blood flow

see it drop, the colors on the screen,
red, blue, green like a geyser exploding,
like the colors of falling in love, blasting

through my body, fluttering through the day,
same pounding, racing away,
my heart screaming let me out of here.

I say, Lou, how are things looking, pretty good,
huh? Big flow all those colors, and he says,
we need to take a deeper look before we know

if there’s a problem. I understand. Look as deep
as you need, Lou. You will be the only one
who’ll ever know what goes on inside those chambers.