Instead of seeing your heart as a poke-bag full of opaque red juice,

imagine in its place our planet, full blue and white, wave-rounded,

like an opal sphere in dancing blacknesses deep as many mirrors,

but imagine it a planet so small it might be held in a hand,

and think of it as etched,

surrounded on all sides by a body-edged silhouette.

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God first set our swimming world within us not to trouble us,

but so we could all learn of a common earth

and see with the helping clarities of all the others.

Adam, as you know, was part planet.

Molten red earth circulated as his blood, until it cooled,

and the vapors cooled, and the inner planet froze from steam to stone.

For a million years we used the planet’'s heart

for tooling, for killing and for building;

we made graves of piled stones for our sleep in the hard lands;

we piled stones high, remembering and protecting,

until our own hearts sought pale twilight under all the waters,

and others piled stones upon us.

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We built our temples and our gods of the selfsame stone

and cut myrtle sprigs and laurel from the lowest regions,

to attach to trunks of marmoreal pillars as leaves and branches—

urgent to pretend stone back to upright life, warm growth.

But stone no longer melted or grew, and so it is today.

The huddled planet within can only shiver

and wait for a kiss that might not come.

​

Greet each person from the planet as an intimate:

you will know the most of life it is possible to bear

and our one heart will grow large in all and everyone.