Jane Hirshfield, 'Not Yet'

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Not Yet

Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened, with milk.

Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch –
one maple leaf lifted back.

I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:

Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.

Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-

Not-yet-not.

I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.

By Jane Hirshfield

Comments

[med_cat]

Quite...

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

The videos of your backyard birds were what brought this one to mind. The cardinals were my mother's favorite - strange to think that it's been 30 years since I've seen one, and that I won't ever see one again unless I travel back East some day, which is unlikely.

[med_cat]

I see; thanks! Yes, the male cardinals are so colorful--one especially notices it in the winter months, when everything is so drab. But you have flickers, and other birds, at least ;)