HEART, not only are you much taken for granted
- how many million beats do you make
in one lifetime? and rarely a grumble -
but you are not even responsible
for most of what you are blamed for.
Am I hard-hearted?
Am I half-hearted?
Nothing to do with you, blame the brain
or wherever the soul or the spirit is.
As for heartburn, that is merely a slander
put about by the digestive organs.

Who knows better than you
that I may experience a change of heart
without a transplant?
or search my heart,
without needing surgery or a body-scan?
a heart of gold, or of stone,
may do for a statue, but not for me, thanks.
And if I hear a heart-warming story,
you still maintain
your good old ninety-eight point four.
I can pour my heart out
but you always stay put.
If my heart aches,
do you need an aspirin?
If I say my heart is in my boots,
or in my mouth,
if I wear it on my sleeve,
we both know you are where you always are.
(Thank goodness my heart's in the right place.)

OK, if I see a face of heart-stopping beauty,
you may pump extra blood to my giveaway cheeks,
even palpitate a little,
but stop? No, not you.
And when I met (long ago)
a girl after my own heart,
and she stole my heart away,
was I left heartless? Of course not, because you,
faithfully beating inside me,
are only one of my hearts, and the other,
though it may well be less *****
than metaphor,
is as necessary to a lover
(or a poet)
as you are.