Avalanche

Photo by Ciprian Morar on Unsplash

They say pain opens the heart

and maybe this is true;

a man once told me he never felt love

until the doctors broke open his chest

stopped his heart and cut out the blockage.

Now love flows over and around him

and his eyes cry for joy

and for the loss of everything he did not feel

before he was torn in two.

If pain opens the heart

then the heart of the world is a bleeding mess

and there is no surgery skilled enough

to staunch the gaping loss:

this place where some human lives mean less

than others, this planet

that heaves and groans and hurls its children

into the unknown.

The side of a mountain is no place to be

even in the safest conditions; you do not want

to stay there, all that uncertain ground

falling away beneath you.

When disaster strikes

you want solid ground, you want working

cellphones, you want infrastructure and exit signs