Doubt

I opened an old notebook, thinking I must have a poem — one bad poem — that would illustrate this feeling. And I found this, from February.  I keep confronting the same blocks, and learning the same lessons over and over again. It’s a spiral.

THE TABLET OF THE HEART

Today my heart is a tabby cat,
and then a slice of lemon in a water glass.
My heart is a postcard of Notre Dame,
a few lines of a poem by Rumi
on my coffee mug.
Later, my heart is a child swinging
from her mother’s grocery cart.
At evening, I open my notebook to write
and nothing comes.
So I sit listening to the wind in the trees
outside my window
and I remember how God writes,
how effortlessly–a foil star on a calendar page,
dinner on the stove, a daughter
leaning in the doorway, her hand
on her skinny hip.
All of it written indelibly on the tablet of the heart.