Mark Maginn

Diagnosis

DIAGNOSIS

 

Echocardiogram after fifty—

valves; tricuspid, mitral, pulmonary,

aortic: open, close, beat and rasp,

systolic, diastolic.

Ultrasounds of the heart of my heart

reveal all and nothing.

On the table facing the monitor,

I watch my heart,

this intimate, that foreign. Like watching

my wife stir next to me in moonlight,

the surface of her body familiar

as the lines on my face.

The heart of her

heart, unfathomable,

sounded only by desire, wounds,

inches away.