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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Your Sunday Poem

This from Jane Hirshfield's collection of poems, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."  The book is available in paperback and is a wonderful read.



The Contract

The woman who gave me the rosebush
reminds me:
"Cut it back hard."

The stems resist.

Thorns and weedy twig-thickets
catch on jacket sleeve, on gloves.
Core-wood splinters green under the shears.

Impossible to believe
that so little left will lead to fragrance.

Still, my hands move quickly,
adding their signature branch by branch,
agreeing to loss.

2 comments:

Sewertoons AKA Lynette Tornatzky said...

Food for thought all right. Thanks Ann!

Alon Perlman said...

On a similar vain; How are the cut back Mantilja Popies handling the heat?