Three Times My Life Has Opened by Jane Hirshfield
Three Times My Life Has Opened
Jane HirshfieldThree times my life has opened.
Once, into darkness and rain.
Once, into what the body carries at all times within it and
starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.
Once, into the fire that holds all.
These three were not different.
You will recognize what I am saying or you will not.
But outside my window all day a maple has stepped
from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping
the colored silks.
Neither are we different in what we know.
There is a door. It opens. Then it is closed. But a slip of
light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor,
or the one red leaf the snow releases in March.
MARGINALIA
Lying in bed. Thinking and not thinking.
ABOUT JANE HIRSHFIELD
Jane Hirshfield was born in New York City on February 24, 1953. A poet, translator, essayist, and editor. Hirshfield’s books of poetry include The Asking: New & Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf); Ledger (Alfred A. Knopf); The Beauty: Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2015) and Given Sugar, Given Salt (HarperCollins, 2001). Hirshfield is also the author of Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World (Alfred A. Knopf); Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry (HarperCollins); and an e-book… (more)
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