unnameable heart

The cricket who

kept me company three days

has fallen silent

I don't know where.

There are so many

lives of which I know nothing.

Even my own.  It moves now

through my fingers toward yours

and I know nothing

I can say that will name its heart.

A boat drifts far out

on the river below the mountains,

and below it

the fish, the great fish

that the one in the boat has come for,

swims in the shadow.

Perhaps the cricket is there, inside the fish.

Stranger things have happened.

I have looked everywhere else

for my lost companion.

From here the shadow looks small,

but to the fish it is huge.

Range after range of mountains,

and still the old painters

found a place

where two could walk together, side by side.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Lives of the Heart