Loose Heart

Photo by DeEtta Harris Jenkins

"Loose lips sink ships."

the spy's handbook warns.

   What do loose hearts do?

   Do they sink things,

   or perhaps keep them afloat?

      I've seen what hard hearts do,

      and even cold ones,

      swung like a sling-blade

      along the dirt-road easement

      of someone’s life,

      knee-capping dreams

      and those free-spirited plants

      we call weeds.

But a loose heart,

a soft heart,

a warm heart?

   It’s one that has figured out how

   to crack without becoming broken,

   to give without being taken,

   to love without being consumed.

      A loose heart is a permeable heart,

      neither keeping all things out

      nor holding all things in;

   

a risky business indeed,

but precisely the kind of fibrillation

to which the gospel calls us.

   The loose heart gives because it beats,

   cracks because that’s how

   love leaks out and seeps back in.

© 2016 Todd Jenkins