against certainty

.

.

There is something out in the dark that wants to correct us. 

Each time I think "this," it answers "that." 

Answers hard, in the heart-grammar's strictness. 

If I then say "that," it too is taken away. 

Between certainty and the real, an ancient enmity. 

When the cat waits in the path-hedge, 

no cell of her body is not waiting. 

This is how she is able to so completely to disappear. 

I would like to enter the silence portion as she does. 

To live amid the great vanishing as a cat must live, 

one shadow fully at ease inside another.

~ Jane Hirshfield
from After