Heart-lessons

Sometimes the heart spills inside out

With love and hurt and hope and doubt

We ache to turn its outside in

But cannot reach to deeps within

And what we thought we knew was true

Is more true than we ever knew

Before the tide of morn to night

Spilled oceans of grief and delight

And that heart-cup beneath our bones

Is all filled up; it moans and groans

As expectations are reversed

And joy’s elation moment-cursed

The ebb and flow of come and go

Perplexes everything we know

The heart must be an acrobat

A punching bag, an alley cat

…a howling gale, a teddy-bear

A fort, a ship, a sailor where

Life is a sea and a tight-rope

We cling to faith’s guard-rails of hope

…for oft the heart pours inside out

With love and laughter, fear and doubt

But with each sucker-punching thrust

The heart is learning what it must

…the heart is learning how to trust

© Janet Martin