The heart is a toy car factory
where half the models are broken
and the other half are racing in circles
out of control.
But when one really runs,
boy, oh boy!
It’s a feeling like the Grand Prix
(of little tiny cars).
It’s like Wuthering Heights
(if that had ended better).
It’s like the flying groundlessness
of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
It’s a big factory and there’s a general there
who orders everyone around,
barking regulations into the trenches;
but it’s the secretary who catches every mistake
on a notepad like the stone tablet of Moses:
how every single wheel is made,
what little frames make up the chassis,
why their little hoods don’t pop.
Possibly she is the muse herself
except that she transcribes
everything once removed
like a simile.
And among the boys and girls who like to sit outside
the big rolling doors of this heart factory
watching the new cars come out on a long, gray chute,
one of them is always looking for the red ones
and so all the blue ones and the yellow ones
and the green ones go by
plowing into the little parking lots
and into the fists of other kids.
One is watching for just the red ones
because that’s the vehicle to take them
where they want to go like a red wheelbarrow
upon which so much depends.
But if you stand up for a minute you can see it:
the whole long track into the world.
It’s all the cars and every car
and even the walls and doors
and the sun setting on the western wall
like Humpty Dumpty
and even why the factory was ever built in the first place.
It’s not the parts stacked up right here or over there.
It’s more than the heart’s tenor or the mileage
of the vehicle or even the sum
of all the colorful little cars.
It’s the whole thing.
The whole thing.