It seems we have said too little about
the heart, per se,
how it sits in its chambered nub
of grease and echo
listening for movement in the farthest
reed beds – any feathered thing will do,
love being interspecific, here,
more often than we imagine.
If anything, I’d liken us to certain
warblers, less appealing in the wild
than how we’d look
in coloured lithographs,
yet now and then, I’m on the point of hearing
bitterns at the far edge of the lake,
that cry across the marshes like the doom
you only get in books, where people die
so readily for love, each heart becomes
a species in itself, the sound it makes
distinctive, one more descant in the dark,
before it disappears into the marshes.
* 1. Attribution of animal form or nature to a deity or superhuman being. 2. Imitation or representation of animal forms in decorative art or symbolism. (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary)