Transplanted

Transplanted
By Lorna Crozier

This heart met the air. Grew in the hours
between the first body and the next
a taste for things outside it: the heat
of high intensity, wind grieving
in the poplar leaves, the smell of steam
wafting through the open window
from the hot dog vendor's cart. Often it skips

a beat - grouse explode from ditches,
a man flies through the windshield,
a face the heart once knew
weeps in the corridor that gives nothing back
but unloveliness and glare.

Like a shovel that hits the earth, then rises,
and hits the earth again, it feels its own
dull blows. Some nights it is a sail billowing
with blood, a raw fist punching.
Some nights, beneath the weight of blankets,
flesh and bones, the heart remembers. Feels those
surgical gloves close around it, and goes cold.

"Lighthearted" by Cianelli Studios

Thanks for sending that poem on, Ryan! Love it.