After death the heart sometimes keeps beating
a little. Or after it’s removed
from the body. Before death is diagnosis
and prognosis, and in between
is dinner, and after dinner my mother gasps
at the beauty of the lamb heart
in the farm stand freezer. I want that.
Conspiratorial whisper. Get that
for me. Behind us, blue palimpsest
of mountains, each layered with its own
ghost. Before us, parked cars. Of course
I go back for the heart. I’ve been trying so hard
to be good I’ve forgotten how
easy it can be, trotting the bloody trophy
out to my mother waiting
in the parking lot. Maybe
a year, the doctor will say
after the small talk. Then I’ll get good
and drunk. Good as the gold
light piercing the heart I hold
in my cold hands. Brain scans suggest the dead
can still imagine vigorous games of tennis, says the radio
driving home. But what if you never imagined tennis
while alive, my mother wants to know. No
mountains now. Stars. The marbled heart
with the gone lamb around it. I could explain.
But what about the lamb’s mother.
