Heart
“…not to do to others, as you would not wish done to yourself; to have no murmuring against you in the country, and none in the family.”
Analects 12:2*
Heart
My heart is winter's stubborn stream
the kind that sings beneath the ice,
whose current carves what frost would claim
and will not freeze at mercy's fail.
I've known the weight that stills the weak,
have worn the season's sharpest chains,
yet kept my pulse beneath the snow
where even silence hums with names.
Strength is not the tree that shatters,
nor the stone that chips its edge
but the frost that comes hidden,
water's quiet, blade-like pledge.
Let them say the cold has won,
while my slow fire feeds its spark.
No—I'll break no branch in passing,
nor leave ice where I impart.
For though I walk this road alone,
my footprints melt where they are placed.
The heart that winter couldn't kill
becomes the flood that lifts the veil.
*James Legge, trans., The Chinese Classics Vol. 1: Confucian Analects (London: St. George Press, 2024), II: XXIV pg. 251.