Three Times My Life Has Opened by Jane Hirshfield

Jane Hirshfield

Three Times My Life Has Opened by Jane Hirshfield

T.

Lying in bed. Thinking and not thinking.

Three Times My Life Has Opened

Jane Hirshfield

Three 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.

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poetry