Your Sunday Poem

This from Jane Hirshfield, from the July 2 New Yorker.  She's a wonderful poet, has more than several wonderful books of her poems out, in paperback, so please go discover her at your local bookstore.  "After," and "Given Sugar, Given Salt," are full wonderful things. Support your poets.  Buy one of their books today.

This Morning, I Wanted Four Legs

Nothing on two legs weighs much,
or can.
an elephant, a donkey, even a cookstove --
those legs, a person could stand on.
Two legs pitch you forward.
Two legs tire.
They look for another two legs to be with,
to move one set forward to music
while letting the other move back.
They want to carve into a tree trunk:
2gether4ever.
Nothing on two legs can bark,
can whinney or chuff.
Tonight, though, everything's different.
Tonight I want wheels.

Your Sunday Poem

This from "Of Gravity & Angels," by Jane Hirshfield.  Loved the sly reference to W.H. Auden's poem, "Musee des Beau Arts."

Osiris

They may tell you the god is broken
into a higher life,
but it isn't true:
the one who comes back remains,
even riveted, even pieced-
together in spring,
an always-broken god.
The knots survive in his body,
the clenched-grain scars.
And the iced winter ponds are real:
the children, skating lightly there,
feel a secret shiver
as they cross the blue places
of darkness rising-to-meet,
where the other face of the god
is looking up.   

Your Sunday Poem

From "The Lives of the Heart," Poems by Jane Hirshfield.

The World Loved by Moonlight

You must try,
the voice said, to become colder.
I understood at once.
It is like the bodies of gods: cast in bronze,
braced in stone.  Only something heartless
could bear the full weight.

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.

Your Sunday Poem

This by Jane Hirshfield from her new book, "Given Sugar, Given Salt."
Bone

The living dog
has found the old dog's toy.
She brings it to the kitchen,
the blue rubber a little cracked
from all that time outside.
My memories,
my counting and expectations,
mean nothing to her;
my sadness, though,
does puzzle her a moment.
Then she keeps on chewing.
Time's instruments are thumb piano,
oboe, ocarina, flute, and dog.
Its movements
run through her body flawlessly.
Only we sing with a catch in the throat.
She hears the thought. -- "Catch?"
She's ready.