May poem of the month

Please consider purchasing a copy of
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF SWANS
by
SØRINA HIGGINS
with cover photography by Rosie Perera.
Sørina’s book may be pre-ordered online by going to Finishing Line Press, clicking on the “New Releases and forthcoming titles” link, and scrolling down the alphabetical list. Your copy will be shipped to you on 8 August 2008. Please assist with early sales by ordering this book soon. Tell your friends! Order multiple copies as gifts!


I'm thankful that this poem of the month, with the accompanying photo by Rosie, is no longer relevant! This year, unlike some, we have a beautiful spring with flowers and not a hint of snow. It's been rainy some days, but today is just a day of May perfection. Enjoy!














Photo by Rosie Perera



There is Heartbreak in Heaven
Meditations while listening to Chopin in the snow

I know what a heart feels like when it breaks.
I once knelt in a tiny chapel in the dark, under arched
stained glass, shaken with the kind of weeping
that is red like the inside of a broken body,
gold like threads of life unraveled, shaped
like shattered windows or unfinished songs. Lovely,

and unendurable. This day is nothing like it: lovely
with a gentle kind of comfort, but the beauty breaks
my heart nevertheless. It doesn’t take much: trees arching
over the path, heavy with sparkling winter, weeping
willows dripping into their own shadows, disembodied
cries of hidden kingfishers—the sounds and shapes

of a February run stretched out and quietly shaped
by a river curling its path to lead to loveliness
unbearable, out into solitude so silent I fear to break
the softness with my double tread. Larch
and lilac, sleeping: the very whiteness makes me weep,
as does the music of my pulse: the beauty of a body

that is young—yet knows the intimations of the body’s
coming age. I would not lose my memory for my shape,
would not lose ideas in exchange for imaginary love,
yet wonder how the mind goes on in broken
flesh, wonder if an ugly figure feels the archetype
of what it should have been. I should not weep

on such a day for thoughts; yet I am weeping
to the music that I wear close to my body
in my very ears: a study in the colors and shapes
of sorrow. Each stricken string a single tone of beloved
melancholy. I wish I could stop the breakneck
pace of snowflakes: slow them so the gothic architecture

of each microcosm lifts its tiny architraves
and crystal naves against the silent sun and sweeps
the sky with leaded glass. I believe anybody
could pray in a cathedral made of ice, a shapely
sepulcher of frost. If that is so, more lovely
still the vaults and domes of unbreakable

splendor where I will break my heart on every archway,
dance and weep inside a body formed of perfection,
heal the shape of inside wounds, and laugh for love of sublime sorrow.

-- Sørina Higgins