Let Your Heart Be

by Laura Martin

This poem was written to those who grieve…. Who knows its places and folds, its invitations and its breaking, its memory and its future.

Let your heart be troubled.

Let yourself be struck by grief,

Lost for days,

Fallen,

Left without words.

Let yourself be angry, without apology.

Let yourself feel all of it. 

This troubling is holy too, says the One who

Broke apart the world.

Let your heart be.

And then let your heart find rest

In the curve of grace,

In the space of the unanswerable. 

Let your heart find the place

Where you and the memory of her meet, dancing,

In a warm enough night,

Or at the day’s rising, 

When you notice blossoms

After you had forgotten there could be spring.

Let your heart find rest in the washing of the dish,

In laughter that comes to you

And is not your own.

Let your heart find rest in a voice remembered,

In a letter written and saved,

In the way that love’s conversation with us 

Does not stop.

Let your heart find rest in thank you and amen,

In the flight over an ocean 

Or dinner served at a table.

In the ordinary and the sacred,

In memory and in the present,

In what is lost and what is found again,

In what is as close as children in the next room,

As real as the book opened to a page,

And as distant as the star that gives us

Her light.

You do not ever have to choose

Just one.

Let your heart be.