Autumn Quince How sad they are, the promises we never return to. They stay in our mouths, roughen the tongue, […]

                                    Spell for the End of Grief No incantations, no rosemary and statice, […]

from Fifteen Pebbles Opening the Hand Between Here and Here           On the dark road, only the weight of the rope.           […]

  Everything is Waiting for You Your great mistake is to act the drama as if you were alone. As if life were a progressive and cunning crime with no […]

    from The Ninth Duino Elegy Nor does the wanderer bring down a handful of earth from his high mountain slope to the valley (for earth, too, is mute), but […]

What a journey I had this morning! It started with finding a Hirschfield quote in the 2012 book A God in the House: …poetry exists in part to enlarge us, […]

Dedication You whom I could not save Listen to me. Try to understand this simple speech as I would be ashamed of another. I swear, there is in me no […]

from Lightenings viii The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise Were all at prayers inside the oratory A ship appeared above them in the air. The anchor dragged along […]

A few days ago I was high up – about 900 feet – on a mountain top overlooking hills and vineyards, stretched along the valley floor, in California’s wine country. […]

At the 2013 Palm Beach Poetry Festival, the American poet Jane Hirschfield (1953 -)  was asked to pick a poem that had inspired her.  She demurred by saying she owed most to […]