Heart Attack
       

Our father left us with his heart—
by then, a pale weak thing we never got
to tend before he died;

it hung in the bright air
like an abandoned nest,

and it is useless
to be sad, though I am sad—
above the fields,

yellow-edged wings—
an aubergine mourning cloak.
My father would have shown me

how to pinch its thorax, pin it
on the spreading board and wait

as if it would be less dead, more
enshrined in my own hands.

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Copyright © 2018 Sally Bliumis-Dunn All rights reserved
from Echolocation
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