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.

Copyright Credit: 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.