Let your heart be like a pine
still and silent
with sap coursing in gallons
under that quiet exterior
warming, tiding, flooding with
life-sustaining elements, unseen.
You may feel a wound
and the pain seems fatal
but even now, the heart beckons you
to seek not only heights, but the vast depth and width of root
You may sob and rend your clothes
the heart continues its steady drum
Lie face down and pray for endings
the heart outwaits the grief
Be like the pine
Wait a hundred years
of cone and pollen, of bright sticky new-growth
Wait a hundred years standing
under the slow waltz of stars
Then, tell me
Does it still hurt to breathe?