One morning beginning to notice
which thoughts pull the spirit out of the body, and which return it.
How quietly the abandoned body keens,
like a bonsai maple surrounded by her dropped leaves.
Rain or objects call the forgotten back.
The droplets’ placid girth and weight. The table’s lack of ambition.
How strange it is that longing, too, becomes a small green bud,
thickening the vacant branch-length in early March.

–Jane Hirschfield

I’m on a Hirschfield run, reading After as well as Nine Gates, her essays on poetry. This morning this poem just stayed on, lingering long.

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