How Can My Heart Not Know?

   Years ago there was a short lived variety show on TV, similar to the Carol Burnett Show, but starring Julie Andrews. The reason I remember it at all is because the prequel was about what a hard decision it was for her to agree to do it. Of course, I know a weekly TV show is a lot of work, but I would like to keep the illusion that my entertainment is somewhat fun for the entertainers. All that to say, I know it is a poor intro to a poem to say how hard it was to write, but this is one of those. The subject, of course, has been on my heart for a while, but the words themselves were uncooperative.

 

 

How Can My Heart Not Know? 

 

You think you will know somehow,

when your grown child dies. 

That when their heart stops beating

yours will too--at least for a moment.

Instead you get a call, God willing,

from a friend and not a stranger,

yet your broken heart keeps beating

whether you want it to or not.

 

How can my heart not know

that the baby whose life it sustained 

while his tiny heart was forming,

took a piece of my heart with him

decades ago, when he was born?

That it lived inside him through the years,

felt with him his joy and pain

and surely would die if he did.

My clueless heart may not know

that each beat now spills sorrow,

that only my Father's living water

maintains the balance of its flow.

This wound, I know, won't fully close

until healed by Him whose face

I've never seen, and yet believe

my heart can't help but know.

1/19/23