I Eat Poetry

The Human Heart

We construct it from tin and ambergris and clay,
   ochre, graph paper, a funnel
   of ghosts, whirlpool
in a downspout full of midsummer rain.

It is, for all its freedom and obstinance,
   an artifact of human agency
   in its maverick intricacy,
its chaos reflected in earthly circumstance,

its appetites mirrored by a hungry world
   like the lights of the casino
   in the coyote's eye. Old
as the odor of almonds in the hills around Solano,

filigreed and chancelled with flavor of blood oranges,
   fashioned from moonlight,
   yarn, nacre, cordite,
shaped and assembled valve by valve, flange by flange,

and finished with the carnal fire of interstellar dust.
   We build the human heart
   and lock it in its chest
and hope that what we have made can save us. 

---Campbell McGrath
   from Pax Atomica (Ecco, 2004)