Impossible organ,
beating and pumping our blood river
to some unknown sea.
It doesn’t take much, a small glitch
in the inevitable rhythm,
weatherbreak, wind-howl
and we are set adrift.
We long for order,
but the heart
with its incessant
thump-thump thump-thump
has its own music, its own reasons,
if you can call them that.
Today the sun rises gold as it always does,
washes the buildings across the way with autumnal light,
and as the squalling of birds mingles with the morning traffic,
the heart wakes too into its own song,
its own colors and weathers,
the way the wind
animates the leaves outside the window,
the way red catches the eye.
—© Maxima Kahn
Published in the Nevada County Poetry Series Anthology and in Sacred Fire Magazine