Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken

It is a gift to see with a wild heart -

this planet of blue and green,

so beautiful, so bountiful -

vision wide and all-

embracing,

until we narrow the scope

to human war and folly,

to all the suffering we heap

upon ourselves and other creatures,

to the damage we cause

to Mother Earth and the

beyond-human realm.

How do we keep our fractured hearts

from breaking?

(how can this be happening again?

I feel I've lived too long.)

I walk among the Ancient Ones,

breathe in the scent of cedar and salal,

part the ferns to see skunk cabbage

thrusting upward, salmonberry blooms

so pink and sweet. I count the waves,

measuring my breathing to their ebb

and flow. I stitch up the cracks and fissures

in my heart with poems, ease the ache 

of harsh words coming at me

with cups of tea and the comfort

of time passing. Springtime

is blossoming again in spite of us,

showering blossoms even as

bombs fall and families flee in terror.

(how can this be happening again?

I feel I've lived too long.)

They say wild hearts can't be broken,

yet mine has shattered and been healed

a thousand times. It stretches now,

like rubber, to accommodate

more pain, as unwelcome

in my exhausted old age

as it ever was, yet here it is

again.

The gold of wisdom and experience

fills in the cracks, the ache,

like kintsugi does old pottery.

But even hearts of gold

can break.

for my prompt at earthweal: Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken. But there are times when it feels like they can.