Bleeding Heart

Bleeding Heart
by Paul J. Willis

(Dicentra formosa)

Finally, a flower after my own.
     You there, hanging

in unashamed bivalve clusters
     at the feet of ancient cedars.

So few of them left, you know.
     Is that what breaks you? Is that

what makes you wear your sweet pink
     ventricles on your green sleeve?

—Rockport State Park

—from Deer at Twilight: Poems from the North Cascades