The heart breaks and breaks and lives by breaking.
Stanley Kunitz, “Testing Tree”
Like any other muscle,
the heart, when injured,
will clench, and will stay that way
for a long, long time, most likely
long past the time of usefulness.
But when it relaxes again,
perhaps because it has been touched
in just the right way, or perhaps
just because it is exhausted
with its own clenching, well then
it is like when the sun hits the forest
in late morning and releases the scent
of pine and greening leaves.
And it is like when you walk past a spring
and a dozen blue butterflies all brush
you with their wings, a feeling so impossibly
soft and tender that you cannot help
but let the heart stay open, though you know
it will be wounded again. It is not
in the end the heart itself that matters.
It is the practice of releasing again, again.