Heartbeats

They tell me, world, you’re waves, just fields—unreal.
Yet when I choose to love you, gray or bright,
I hear the wind, the rain, my heart, and feel

like the shimmering timbres of a glockenspiel.
As I watch your freckles sparkle in the night,
it seems, my world, you’re not entirely real

until a katydid, a vixen’s squeal
or the baritone hoots of a barred owl out of sight
quicken my heart, and all at once I feel

I’m gliding on great eagle wings. I wheel
above the willows and the stream—as light
as neutrinos racing through deep space. Unreal?

Although it’s doubtful I shall ever peel
away your mysteries, when you invite
my quarks to Lindy hop with yours, I feel

the milkweed and the Milky Way, the steel
inside my Oldsmobile, a drifting kite
or a finch in flight—unreal and yet real
as the wind, the moon, and the heartbeats that I feel.