Dreamheart

Tony Hoagland

They took the old heart out of your chest 

 all blue and spoiled like a sick grapefruit 

the way you removed your first wife from your life, 

 and put a strong young blonde one in her place. 

What happened to the old heart is unrecorded 

 but the wife comes back sometimes in your dreams, 

vengeful and berating, with a hairdo orange as flame, 

 like a mother who has forgotten that she loved you 

more than anything. How impossible it is to tell 

 bravery from selfishness down here, 

a leap of faith from a doomed attempt at flight. 

 What happened to the old heart is the scary part: 

thrown into the trash, and never seen again, 

 but it persists. Now it's like a ghost, 

with its bloated purple face, 

 moving through a world of ghosts, 

that's all of us; 

 dreaming we're alive, that we're in love.