The Heart Under Your Heart by Craig Arnold
The Heart Under Your Heart
by Craig Arnold
Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart
under his heart.
—James Richardson
The heart under your heart
is not the one you share
so readily so full of pleasantry
& tenderness
it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist
it is full of things
you have never shared with me
broken engagements bruises
& baking dishes
the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear
or so I imagine you have never shown me
& how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
perhaps you have seen or guessed
it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells
on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting
This is a curious poem to me, and it speaks to the guardedness and layers and veils we hide behind. Even with our intimate partners there can sometimes be something so guarded, so rarely breached, some part that has never been shown, and for some, that may never be… & someone stands there waiting.
Craig Arnold (1967–2009) was an American poet whose disappearance is one of the great losses in contemporary American poetry. He published two books — Shells (1999, which won the Yale Younger Poets Prize, judged by W.S. Merwin) and Made Flesh (Ausable Press, 2008, the volume that holds The Heart Under Your Heart). In April 2009, while on a research trip to Japan studying volcanoes (a recurring interest in his work — he was fascinated by volcanic landscapes as figures for the buried interior), he disappeared on the small island of Kuchinoerabu-jima. A search party found his trail ended at a steep cliff. His body was never recovered. He was forty-one. His third collection, Hot Hot Hot (2009), was published posthumously.
