Within every one of us are four heart chambers that empty and fill throughout our lives. We think of the heart as the origin of love, compassion, and courage, something at our core that can be broken, mended, and in modern medicine, replaced, but something we cannot be without.

For some poets, the thrumming rhythm of a heartbeat may convert to meter and rhyme; for others, iambs or free verse. A poet hears the pounding, lets the poem emerge, and puts it down on paper—which is the bottle for the lightning.