Thursday, December 8, 2011

a poem by Jane Hirshfield

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 shadows.

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

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Search This Blog

Loading...

Followers

About Me

My Photo
Georgia, United States
I teach seventh graders writing and grammar and live in the north Georgia mountains just across a small stretch of forest from a pointy old mountain called Sharptop. I write, read, take pictures, meditate a little when I can, play around with creating ephemera from paper and other things, cook, hike, watch wildlife, and collect random bits of interesting oddness, both tangible and abstract. If you want, e-mail me at riverrun67@gmail.com or lksorrells@hotmail.com.