Poetry--"Her Heart is Deep" written this past Spring

Her Heart is Deep

I know this woman, and her heart is deep.

She loves long and laughs hard--
and sometimes loves hard and laughs long.

She folds those she loves into long, soft embraces;
kisses her children with sweet chocolate kisses;
and pulls others in with her smile.
But her heart is deep; and it resonates with echoes of times past.

In the well of her heart, she held promises of love; fanciful dreams;
plotted courses through her present; made maps for the future.
(But the terrain was unknown, and unscrupulous men plotted to lead her astray.)
And her deep heart was too kind to know this.

With her scars and new-found knowledge;
she set forth for other lands. Her eyes shone like fog lights;
cutting through the swirling mists and calling lovers to her side like a siren...
But her bruised heart was deep; and kind men left pieces of themselves there;
could not fully find their way back from her depths...
(She did not really have control of her heart then--and could wield it as a weapon.)
And for this she now sorrows.

In her cryptic heart she learned to find refuge from all sorts of intimacies--
(But her heart was deep, and it was hard to see this.)
She had learned to protect her heart--
And with her brave face and her compassion and her loving ways;
no one knew the depths of her heart; and no one saw her secret pain.

But now the woman has learned to laugh again; love again; cry tears of joy--
But her heart is deep; and it carries those secret scars and holds arcane secrets.
You can not see these from the surface...
Because to see her now is to behold love...

Children seek comfort in her shade;
friends vie for her ear; and lovers wait to lie with her again.
(No one knows that she holds her hands aloft when alone, letting damselflies alight
on her upturned hand; no one knows that in secret,
she can make an unknown cat purr from across a room or alley, simply by staring at it;
no one knows that she catches dandelion fluff on her tongue as if it's ambrosia.)

No one knows her utter contentment in these simple joys--
These are among the secrets she keeps;
In those watery, fertile depths
of her too-deep heart.