My Eyes An hour is not a house, a life is not a house, you do not go through them as if they were doors to another. Yet an hour can have shape and proportion, four walls, a ceiling. An hour can be dropped like a glass. Some want quiet as others want bread. Some want sleep. My eyes went to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does. _______ I Wake Early I wake early, make two cups of coffee, drink one, think, go back to sleep, wake again, think, drink the other. To start a day over is a card game played for no money, a ripe tomato, a swimming cat. Time here: lukewarm, with milk and sugar, big and unset as a table. I wake twice. Twice the window unbroken, transparent. Twice the cat's nose and ears above water. Twice the war (my war) is distant, its children's children are distant. _______ Zero Plus Anything Is a World Four less one is three. Three less two is one. One less three is what, is who, remains. The first cell that learned to divide learned to subtract. Recipe: add salt to hunger. Recipe: add time to trees. Zero plus anything is a world. This one and no other, unhidden, by each breath changed. Recipe: add death to life. Recipe: love without swerve what this will bring. Sister, father, mother, husband, daughter. Like a cello forgiving one note as it goes, then another. Excerpted from The Beauty by Jane Hirshfield. Copyright © 2015 by Jane Hirshfield. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Excerpted from The Beauty: Poems by Jane Hirshfield All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
