February 29

Spring frost, 1919

 Elioth Gruner 

February 29

An extra day-
Like the painting's fifth cow,
who looks out directly,
straight toward you,
from inside her black and white spots.

An extra day-

Accidental, surely:
the made calendar stumbling over the real
as a drunk trips over a threshold
too low to see.

An extra day-

With a second cup of black coffee.
A friendly but businesslike phone call.
A mailed-back package.
Some extra work, but not too much-
just one day's worth, exactly.

An extra day-

Not unlike the space
between a door and its frame
when one room is lit and another is not,
and one changes into the other
as a woman exchanges a scarf.

An extra day-

Extraordinarily like any other.
And still
there is some generosity to it,
like a letter re-readable after its writer has died. 

                                   Jane Hirshfield


About this poem
"Behind this poem, written Feb. 29, 2012, was the death of a friend. I had, months before, brought her the present of a traditional bamboo slat painted reproduction of a famous Chinese painting. She had commented, with her customary inhabitance of all things from the inside, how hard it is to paint a cow so well from the front. Her death was unexpected, and a letter from her I had not wanted to put away was still out on my kitchen table. My year's extra day circled around it."
-Jane Hirshfield 

Vårtecken?

I flera dagar har en hackspett trummat — någonstans i närheten!

Prophecy

Rebecca Campbell

The Woodpecker Keeps Returning

The woodpecker keeps returning

to drill the house wall.

Put a pie plate over one place, he chooses another.

There is nothing good to eat there:

he has found in the house

a resonant billboard to post his intentions,

his voluble strength as provider.

But where is the female he drums for? Where?

I ask this, who am myself the ruined siding,

the handsome red-capped bird, the missing mate.

                                                               av  Jane Hirshfield 

Let them not say

A winter night 

Sir William Llewellyn

Let Them Not Say 

Let them not say: we did not see it.
We saw.
Let them not say: we did not hear it.
We heard.

Let them not say: they did not taste it.
We ate, we trembled.

Let them not say: it was not spoken, not written.
We spoke,
we witnessed with voices and hands.

Let them not say: they did nothing.
We did not-enough.

Let them say, as they must say something:

A kerosene beauty.
It burned.

Let them say we warmed ourselves by it,
read by its light, praised,
and it burned. 

Jane Hirshfield

About This Poem
"This poem was written well before today's presidential inauguration and without this event in mind. But it seems a day worth remembering the fate of our shared planet and all its beings, human and beyond."
-Jane Hirshfield