I’d expected the ECG machine
with its beep beep beep beep
but not the scan monitor
on which my heart leaps and dances
as I haven’t for thirty years.

From one angle —
(the nurse moves her hand
from here to there.
She frowns minutely,
then gets the shot)
it really is heart-shaped

— but mostly it’s pure energy,
a fist of pumping muscle,
though it looks to me as if a colony
of moths has set up in it,
or hattifatteners
on some tiny electric journey.

I turn my head to share this
with my husband and see him
flooded out with tears —
“Such a thing to see
your lover’s heart beating,”
he says. “So miraculous
— such a thing.”
— which makes me liquefy too,
save for my solid, dancing heart,
which leaps. Which leaps. Which leaps.