Jane and I

Seriously, you need to read Jane Hirshfield. She is one of my all-time favorite poets ever (following Sara Teasdale, Robert Frost, and followed by Langston Hughes and Henry Thoreau, all of whom you should read). Before I get to my own poem, I'll give you one of my favorite Hirshfield poems.


For What Binds Us
BY JANE HIRSHFIELD
There are names for what binds us:
strong forces, weak forces.
Look around, you can see them:
the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,
nails rusting into the places they join,
joints dovetailed on their own weight.
The way things stay so solidly
wherever they've been set down—
and gravity, scientists say, is weak.

And see how the flesh grows back
across a wound, with a great vehemence,
more strong
than the simple, untested surface before.
There's a name for it on horses,
when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,

as all flesh,
is proud of its wounds, wears them
as honors given out after battle,
small triumphs pinned to the chest—

And when two people have loved each other
see how it is like a
scar between their bodies,
stronger, darker, and proud;
how the black cord makes of them a single fabric
that nothing can tear or mend.


I just find her style so provocative and real and down-to-earth. Poems should speak of the gravity of every day things that go unnoticed, should tell us a story that is both ours and not ours. She evokes images of horses with scars and bumps that, in real life, would make us believe that they are ugly or unimpressive, as well as with the dirty mug and the rusty nail, but she paints a deeper picture, one with feeling. The mark of a true poet is that you can feel exactly how the writer is feeling as you read their work without ever seeing a description of their emotions.

So here's one of mine, in respect to the little things in life.

The Bull and the Virgin

Under bare feet, callused and brown, the grass cringes from the weight of a human body,
springing back piece by piece, slowly reverting back to what it once looked like.
But it is not the same.

In white cotton, with a hem ripped from jumping fences, she floats,
a little cloud too small to rain, too pure to spark lightening.
Her eyes are that of the sea: they are old and knowing, and one can see
she has seen much in her young life.
Almost too much, as the storm lingers beyond the horizon of her irises.
And the split hairs that rain down from her crown are also sign that she,
as well as any wild thing, has more to care for
than the petty details of image.

The bull is mad, angered and fierce.
He is a proud beast, snorting and huffing in steam and stink.
A festering obstinacy keeps him steady, his feet firm stalks in the ground,
hooves that are rough from long treads through the craggy hills that led him here.
He stays true to a course he plotted out long ago,
and his cage is his realm, never his limitation.
Only the beauty can enter his domain without becoming a victim
of sharp, silent, undeniable suspicion.

Her hand, bleeding and burnt, heals slowly,
but there is much to be gained from the company of animals and of the earth,
too much to stay away for good.
Her eyes are decided
as they descend on those of her companion.
His eyes are soft and doting as they turn on his mistress, much less
the furied balls of dark flame that would mark a man walking dead.
They remain in their Eden for a spell before they must return
to the harsh reality of life.