A person
dreams herself blind
hearing the click of a light switch.
*
Forty years since the wake-up han’s
much battered ink-written
“Don’t waste time.”
*
Night-weather’s hearable.
Sometimes the mallet-sound sharp,
other times muffled.
*
Self, too, was hearable inside and outside
the
skin
inside and outside the scent of creek and pine.
*
Stars, wind, day, night, pine bark.
They don’t need us.
They don’t need to be stars, wind, day, night, pine bark.
Jane Hirshfield is the author of eight poetry books, including The Beauty and Given Sugar, Given Salt. She has been honored with the Poetry Center Book Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Academy of American Poets.
