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The Heart Doctor

A massive MI, myocardial infarction, happens on a plane from London
to LA. The woman doesn’t know her distress is a symptom of her heart.

The pastor says, lift up your hearts, and we say, lift them to God.
Everyone else was amazed, but Mary pondered these things in her heart.

My yoga teacher can’t decide whether to be anatomic or spiritual.
Sometimes she says sternum, sometimes she says space of the heart.

Green is the color of the fourth chakra. The one where energy spirals
both ways. From the back, from the front, both in and out of the heart.

My patient is very calm, says he won’t harm himself. He has a plan.
He has no friends. He has no gun or sword. He’s not the King of Hearts.

My mother-in-law gave me a black trunk to use as a hope chest.
I stored the quilt she made for me, a pattern of ribbons and hearts.

Deborah, you can pray and breathe and meditate and chant, give
and receive love, but you can’t keep everyone safe in your heart.

About This Poem:

• This poem first appeared in Cider Press Review in January 2020. It’s in the form of a ghazal.
• Here is a definition of a ghazal from poets.org. You can see I didn’t follow the form exactly.

The ghazal is composed of a minimum of five couplets—and typically no more than fifteen…. Each line of the poem must be of the same length, though meter is not imposed in English. The first couplet introduces a scheme, made up of a rhyme followed by a refrain. Subsequent couplets pick up the same scheme in the second line only, repeating the refrain and rhyming the second line with both lines of the first stanza. The final couplet usually includes the poet’s signature, referring to the author in the first or third person, and frequently including the poet’s own name or a derivation of its meaning.

• I’ve heard the ghazal form compared to a string of pearls. The stanzas are all related, but each one can stand on its own.
• I wrote this after I heard about Carrie Fisher’s death. That same week, I had a suicidal patient come to see me in my office. The confluence of events led to this ghazal.
• I like to challenge myself with writing formal poetry sometimes. Keeping my conscious mind occupied with the constraints of the form paradoxically gives me more freedom to allow my unconscious thoughts to emerge. In the next few weeks, you’ll see a sonnet and a villanelle that I wrote.