How Wide is My Heart?

by Fred LaMotte

How wide is my heart?

Each pulsing atom in this ancient

hologram of blood and muscle

threads its yearning to a distant star.

The thread is love, glistening like silk.

My body must be woven out of That.

Deeply in touch with

the crimson creature in my chest,

I contain galaxies.

They breathe through me,

and the earth grows green.

My pollen riots the meadows.

The healing song of the hive

is hidden in my ribs.

What warms the heart, I follow.

What expands, I go that way,

and I depart from what contracts me,

like an emerald worm without eyes

traveling surely, tender and slow,

down the vein of a fern.

It is better than philosophy.

It is carrying a candle

through the forest at night.

I may not see around the bend,

but each step is illumined.

Who is my Guru?

This throb beneath my sternum.

Don’t look for the mystical door.

Friend, You are the door.