The Secret Heart

We read this in class today, and I got to spend twenty minutes asking leading questions about, and potificating on, the meaning. I'd never read it before I found it in the textbook for the 8th graders, but I love it.

To think, in middle and high school I detested poetry.

The Secret Heart
by Robert Tristin Coffin

Across the years he could recall
His father one way best of all.

In the stillest hour of night
The boy awakened to a light.

Half in dreams, he saw his sire
With his great hands full of fire.

The man had struck a match to see
If his son slept peacefully.

He held his palms each side the spark
His love had kindled in the dark.

His two hands were curved apart
In the semblance of a heart.

He wore, it seemed to his small son,
A bare heart on his hidden one,

A heart that gave out such a glow
No son awake could bear to know.

It showed a look upon a face
Too tender for the day to trace.

One instant, it lit all about,
And then the secret heart went out.

But it shone long enough for one
To know that hands held up the sun.