The Mystery Of The Covert Heart Poem by Doug Stewart

That secret place behind the heart
You know the one, no one discusses
The gems you have stored there,
No one knows the steamship trunks

Closed and locked away in that small room
Never opened, a private tomb, a shadowed
Mausoleum, and you never enter nor reveal
Its existence to anyone. But we all have one.

They are filled with contradictions, some are
True, some are fiction, beauty and hate coexist
Just outside of the same heart, feeding off each
Other, becoming guiding principles in life; unseen

You discover your date’s red hair the night she
Wore an Irish Green coat. That is stored here as is
The literal smell of death when your grandmother
Died. That well-chewed ball your first dog played

‘Till disintegration, the day you found that old Italian
50 Lira piece with Mussolini’s strutting face, everything
You ever thought you lost is here, if you have the courage
To look. No one ever does, but perhaps you are different.