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Jean Nordhaus
Echocardiogram

Strange to lie on a cold slab
and watch my heart, this long-
admired, but reclusive diva cart-

wheel across graph lines, doing
what she was designed to do—
taking the given in, passing it on

enriched, skipping a beat from time
to time, but soldiering on
through childhood’s terrors

adolescent angst, the battlefields
of love, first death, first grief
simply so that I can be.

Even as I sleep, she thrums me
systole, diastole, basso continuo
to my soul, my faithful

St. Bernard bearing her red
barrel of volatile spirits to all
the distant outposts of the body.

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