Fertile Hearts Poem by Sonny Rainshine

His heart feels hollow,
like a red bell pepper,
its chambers housing clusters
of seeds. Feelings are like seeds;
feelings engender thoughts.

Among the rows of moods
and melodies in the garden
of his grief, intrusive nettles
and wild garlic battle
with the new growth
of tender sprouts, fragile tendrils
of hope, of a way out
of hopelessness.

Still the vacant spaces
of his unattended heart
wait to be filled,
fallow now,
and choked with weeds
and bitter herbs,
but as all things
respond to nourishment
and a sympathetic gesture,
a broken spirit carries within it
a seed.