"Possibility: An Assay"
Listen to Jane Hirshfield reading this poem. Again I looked out the window. All around me, the morning still dark.
The mountain's outline there, but not the mountain.
Then a neighbor's facing plate-glass filled
with the colors, acute and tender, of a Flemish painting.
Corals, blues.
Which seemed to be a preview of the future but were,
I knew,
this moment simply looking elsewhere,
like a woman who has wept for weeks who realizes
that she is also hungry.
Jane Hirshfield's sixth book of poetry, After, was named a "best book of 2006" by the Washington Post, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Financial Times.
Clickhere to visit Robert Pinsky's Favorite Poem Project site.To submit poetry to Slate, send up to five poems and a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Robert Pinsky, Slate Magazine, Boston University, 236 Bay State Road, Boston, MA, 02215.