The movie “Snow Falling on Cedars”
Ends with the line, “You have a good heart”
Which makes me wonder:
How many in society actually have one?
We are told far-fetched fairy tales
Of an ugly duckling turning to a swan,
A beast transformed by a lip kiss,
The frog turning into a prince.
All tales of skin-deep beauty.
A good heart, is hard to find,
They say, the type that is unglamorous
In its execution. The twig makes a nest
& lights a fire but is always unsung.
So is a branch that holds
A nest or becomes firewood.
Ishmael the man, took prejudice away
From both love and hate. A man
Who could exonerate his heart
And his mind, to give wheels to justice
To prove the husband of the love of his life,
Was not guilty of the pending charges.
Hidden by boughs of Cedar trees, was
A mainstay that refused to yield;
The heart which still looked past,
The morbid obesity of a love,
To honor the one truth.
A truth that saw the end of day,
In a packed courtroom, where,
A woman who went against her heart,
Was reminded that morning
What she lost for an eternity – A good heart.
A reminder that love triangles
Are not just about gains and losses,
They too become legacies
Of two winners and two losers,
And a two-way heart that doesn’t know
How to balance the two sides;
Haunted by the ambivalence,
Of the unpaved path that lies ahead of one,
Against the road that was paved
But remained unexplored.
A courtroom in San Piedro Island
Brought one Japanese woman,
The father of her two children,
Back to her own house,
While a white man, Ishmael, held
Her embrace, for a brief eternity,
Outside a snow-covered courtroom.
A love that still remains beneath
Creaking cedar trees, was
Lost to a watershed moment in time.
Prejudice can die a sweet death,
Be it hate, or a love that is unattainable,
As Ishmael’s hold slowly let go
Of her that frosted morning,
As did finally, his heart.
