Jane Hirshfield
Sometimes you took the shape
of an unseen mosquito,
sometimes of illness.

Presumed most of the time to be passing,
yet importunate as a toddler
who demanded her own way,
as a phone that would not stop ringing long after it should.

Unignorable pavement slap of the gone-flat tire.

All afternoon the thunder was interrupted by sunshine.
All night the rain was interrupted by trees and roofs.

And still, as rusting steel is uninterrupted by dryness
and hunger uninterrupted by sleep,
interruption and non-interruption sat in the day's container
as salt sits in milk, one whiteness disguised by another.

As a fish in a tank is interrupted by glass, and turns,
a person's fate is to continue
despite,
until.

Death: an interruption not passing,
weighing
one hundred and fifty-eight pounds,
carried on cut plywood with yellow straps.

Birth: an interruption between
two windows,
trying to think of any joke, any tune, that is new.

Between them:

this navigation by echolocation and lidar,
the weathers of avalanche, earthquake, tsunami,
firestorm, drought;
a moment that sets down—gently, sleepily—its half-read novel
on a bedside table whose side turned toward the wall stays unpainted, 
confident the story will be there again come morning.
from the book LEDGER: POEMS / Alfred A. Knopf
READ ABOUT TODAY'S POEM
Share Share
Tweet Tweet
Forward Forward
Poetry Daily logo
Poetry Daily Thanks You

Many thanks indeed to all our readers and contributors, whose passion for poetry inspires us, and to all our generous donors, without whose support we could not continue. We look forward to sharing the very best contemporary poetry with you for the rest of the year. Stay safe and stay well.
Cover of Bernadette Mayer's new book, Memory
"A Hydra Dancing"

"In 1971, for the month of July, powerhouse poet Bernadette Mayer documented her life by shooting a roll of 35 mm film every day and writing down as many experiences, ideas, observations, feelings, and sights as she could."  A new book from Siglio Press, Memory, captures all eleven hundred photographs and two hundred pages of prose.
 
via BOOKFORUM
READ ALL TODAY'S HEADLINES
Cover of Theodore Roethke's Collected Poems
What Sparks Poetry:
Allison Cobb on Theodore Roethke's "I Knew a Woman"

"I encountered Theodore Roethke’s 'I Knew a Woman' in my teacher Rebecca Shankland’s high school English class. We read it alongside Wallace Stevens’ 'Emperor of Ice Cream.' These were probably the first two poems I had read from the twentieth century. They made poetry seem a living possibility to me, not something entombed in the past."
READ THIS WEEK'S ISSUE
You have received this email because you submitted your email address at www.poems.com. 
If you would like to unsubscribe please click here.

© 2020 Poetry Daily, Poetry Daily, MS 3E4, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030

Design by the Binding Agency