Jane Hirshfield

:Thought I'll share this beautifully written poem by Jane Hirshfield.

THE POET

She is working now, in a room
not unlike this one,
the one where I write, or you read.
Her table is covered with paper.
The light of the lamp would be
tempered by a shade, where the bulb's
single harshness might dissolve,
but it is not, she has taken it off.
Her poems? I will never know them,
though they are the ones I most need.
Even the alphabet she writes in
I cannot decipher. Her chair -
Let us imagine whether it is leather
or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her
have a chair, her shadeless lamp,
the table. Let one or two she loves
be in the next room. Let the door
be closed, the sleeping ones healthy.
Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

What a zest ! (Ron Wallace)

= Absolutely love this piece written by Ron Wallace. =
"I remember saying a little prayer, to God or the muse or my subconscious or whatever was generating the poem, to let me finish it. Just then my wife walked in downstairs and my heart sank. Would she interrupt me? Would I lose the poem? But what happened instead was that SHE WALKED INTO THE POEM."

ORANGES

This morning I eat an orange.
It is sour and juicy. My mouth
will tingle all day.
Outside, it is cold. The trees
do not anticipate their leaves.
When I breathe into my hand I smell
oranges.

I walk across the lake.
Ice fishermen twitch their poles until
perch flicker the surface, quick
and bright as orange slices.
The sun ripens in the sky.
The wind turns thin and citrus,
the day precise, fragile.

My mustache and eyelashes freeze.
When I arrive at your house
you are friendly as a fruit seller.
We peel off our clothes, slice through
that wordy rind.
When I lift my fingers to your lips:
oranges.
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"As I was closing the poem I was thinking more of tactile and olfactory than of visual imagery -- the touch, the smell, of oranges on the lips. It wasn't until a reader later pointed out the visual image of the ending -- lips look like orange slices -- that I saw that element of the poem."
= Lips like orange slices ...... beautiful! =