works and loves

1

Rain fell as a glass

breaks,

something suddenly everywhere at the same

2

To live like a painting

looked into from more than one angle at once —

eye to eye with the doorway,

down at the hair,

up at your own dusty feet.

3

“This is your house,”

said my bird heart to my heart of the cricket,

and I entered.

4

The happy see only happiness,

the living see only life,

the young see only the young,

as lovers believe

they wake always beside one also in love.

5

However often I turned its pages,

I kept ending up

as the same two sentences of the book:

The being of some is: to be. Of others: to be without.

Then I fell back asleep, in Swedish.

6

A sheep grazing is unimpressed by the mountain

but not by its flies.

7

The grief

of what hasn’t yet happened —

a door closed from inside.

The weight of the grass

dividing

an ant’s five-legged silence

walking through it.

8

What is the towel, what is the water,

changes,

though of we three,

only the towel can be held upside down in the sun.

9

“I was once.”

Said not in self-pity or praise.

This dignity we allow barn owl,

ego, oyster.

~ Jane Hirshfield

from Poetry (January 2014)