By Greg Keith
Date: 11 October 1998

On Being Easy for Susan

Thirty years ago "heart" was just insistent muscle
clenching in my chest. If the word cropped up in a poem,
the whole piece became instantly corny. Now, it seems,
it's also coeur, core; still a chambered interior but more 
complex than the feisty organ from which it takes its name.

And you are right, the doors to my heart are not locked,
it's easy to walk right in. It's even true that I had a place
prepared for the right guest before you ever appeared.
But look, there are rooms here no one has entered,
other places reached only once or twice. Not everyone
can make a home here. It's also easy to win the lottery,
nothing simpler, just hold the right number and it's yours.

There are six billion people on my planet. We each
know very few of them. We go to our graves
with regions of the heart untouched because no one 
reached that far, fit that well. Or we did meet those people
but couldn't let them in just then, we were unprepared
or otherwise engaged, just how it is.

My heart may not be that great or rare a prize, but you
have won it, like it or not. I like it, myself. I've been
telling friends and family I've found the winner.

by Greg Keith, from Life Near 310 Kelvin, SLG Books, 1998