Heart by Rick Campbell : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 169

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

I remember being scared to death when, at about thirty years of age, I saw an x-ray of my skull. Seeing one’s self as a skeleton, or receiving any kind of medical report, even when the news is good, can be unsettling. Suddenly, you’re just another body, a clock waiting to stop. Here’s a telling poem by Rick Campbell, who lives and teaches in Florida.

Heart

My heart was suspect.

Wired to an EKG,

I walked a treadmill

that measured my ebb

and flow, tracked isotopes

that ploughed my veins,

looked for a constancy

I’ve hardly ever found.

For a month I worried

as I climbed the stairs

to my office. The mortality

I never believed in

was here now. They

say my heart’s ok,

just high cholesterol, but

I know my heart’s a house

someone has broken into,

a room you come back

to and know some stranger

with bad intent has been there

and touched all that you love. You know

he can come back. It’s his call,

his house now.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2006 by Rick Campbell and reprinted from Dixmont, Autumn House Press, 2008, by permission of the writer. First published in The Florida Review, Fall, 2006. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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