Reflections of a Man's Heart

A note waterfalls steadily

through us,

just below hearing.

 

Or this early light

streaming through dusty glass:

what enters, enters like that,

unstoppable gift.

 

And yet there is also the other,

the breath-space held between any call

and its answer -

 

In the querying

first scuff of footstep,

the wood owls' repeating,

the two-counting heart:

 

A little sabbath,

minnow whose brightness silvers past time.

 

The rest-note,

unwritten,

hinged between worlds,

that precedes change and allows it.

 

- Jane Hirshfield, The October Palace