The Woodpecker Keeps Returning
The woodpecker keeps returning
to drill the house wall.
Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.
There is nothing good to eat there:
he has found in the house
a resonant billboard to post his intentions,
his voluble strength as provider.
But where is the female he drums for? Where?
I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,
the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.
From: After by Jane Hirshfield Harper Collins
I saw Hirshfield give a reading in Northampton, Mass. It was at the Smith College Poetry Center and it remains the most beautiful presentation of poetry I have ever witnessed. It was altering how this soft voiced woman could lead us to the place that she felt we needed to go. She has a Buddhist eye for the world. Hirshfield's Buddhism is not just a way of living but her very life itself. This is a poet who keeps her ego in check and allows the poem to work its way into our minds without force. The poems stay and change the reader's perception of the commonplace. If you are out of sorts read as much Hirshfield as you possibly can.
From: After by Jane Hirshfield Harper Collins
I saw Hirshfield give a reading in Northampton, Mass. It was at the Smith College Poetry Center and it remains the most beautiful presentation of poetry I have ever witnessed. It was altering how this soft voiced woman could lead us to the place that she felt we needed to go. She has a Buddhist eye for the world. Hirshfield's Buddhism is not just a way of living but her very life itself. This is a poet who keeps her ego in check and allows the poem to work its way into our minds without force. The poems stay and change the reader's perception of the commonplace. If you are out of sorts read as much Hirshfield as you possibly can.
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