On the Heart List

He's sound asleep,

mesmerized by pumping,

so he doesn't know

what "heartless" means-

how, like a crow,

it hovers single-mindedly, waiting

for someone else's loss,

how, always on alert, its wife sleeps

near the telephone,

twists and tangles in her sheets

and, all night, dreams

of crashes, dreams by accident

the heart that saves him

is his daughter's.

He doesn't know how much she fears

the nightmare, like some Judith

rising up in her, sword in hand,

how even in the daylight

she fears the dark, the wrong head

severed on the sand.