First Light Edging Cirrus

Jane Hirshfield

 
1025 molecules
are enough
to call woodthrush or apple.
A hummingbird, fewer.
A wristwatch: 1024.
An alphabet's molecules,
tasting of honey, iron, and salt,
cannot be counted—
as some strings, untouched,
sound when a near one is speaking.
As it was when love slipped inside us.
It looked out face to face in every direction.
Then it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud.
 
From Come, Thief (Knopf, 2011), by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 2008 by Jane Hirshfield. Used with permission.

Poems by This Author

A Hand by Jane Hirshfield
A hand is not four fingers and a thumb
Each Moment a White Bull by Jane Hirshfield
For What Binds Us by Jane Hirshfield
Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt by Jane Hirshfield
The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in the dream
Many-Roofed Building in Moonlight by Jane Hirshfield
I found myself
The Bell Zygmunt by Jane Hirshfield
The Supple Deer by Jane Hirshfield
This Was Once a Love Poem by Jane Hirshfield
This was once a love poem
Waking the Morning Dreamless After Long Sleep by Jane Hirshfield
But with the sentence


Further Reading

Related Poems
Altars of Light
by Pierre Joris
Cloud Country
by Carl Phillips
Night on the Great River [three translations]
by Meng Hao-jan