Underneath(s)

You cannot walk it out.  You cannot push it through your body, try as you might.  Sturdy steps, winter-boot-clad, through fast falling snow in early morning light—all ice fog and fantastical—are futile.  Your heart sits squarely, not moving.  Bird in a cage, this heart.  Wants only for someone to open the door, to let it out and give it wings.  Instead, you try to walk it out.  But you cannot push it through your body, try as you might.  It aches, beats—persistent—strings tugging on memory like a balloon fastened to a child’s wrist with a loose bow.  It is enough to know it beats, without thinking.  It is enough. You cannot walk it out, this love.  You cannot push it out through the soles of your feet, urging it down into the earth and—underneath that, even—more deeply, into hidden labyrinths of nickel and copper mines.  You cannot walk it out.  It will not let you.  Instead, it begs you to carry it, heavy and laden, tired and weary, from this point of land under winter pines to that one, where the bay curves in like the place where a waist is sculpted by a man’s hand.  You cannot walk it out because you know it is enough.  And it is also too much.