Apr 16, 2025
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Morris Hirshfield (1872–1946) Girl with Pigeons 1942
Oil on canvas 76.1 x 101.7 cm
Museum of Modern Art, New York
One ran, her nose to the ground, a rusty shadow neither hunting nor playing. One stood; sat; lay down; stood again. One never moved, except to turn her head a little as we walked. Finally we drew too close, and they vanished. The woods took them back as if they had never been. I wish I had thought to put my face to the grass. We kept on walking, speaking as strangers do when becoming friends. There is more and more I tell no one, strangers nor loves. This slips into the heart without hurry, as if it had never been. And yet, among the trees, something has changed. Something looks back from the trees, and knows me for who I am.
Jane Hirshfield, “Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight” The Atlantic Monthly (vol. 277, no. 6, June 2016)
Counting, New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain to Me
The world asks, as it asks daily: And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep- broken, fractured?
I count, this first day of another year, what remains. I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands.
Can admire with two eyes the mountain, actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles. Can make black- eyed peas and collards. Can make, from last year’s late- ripening persimmons, a pudding. Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.
For years, I woke each day first to the mountain, then to the question.
The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old, and still they surprised.
I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea, brought postcards and stamps. For years, each day, something.
Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder.
Today, I woke without answer.
The day answers, unpockets a thought as though from a friend— don’t despair of this falling world, not yet didn’t it give you the asking
A chair in snow should be like any other object whited & rounded and yet a chair in snow is always sad more than a bed more than a hat or house a chair is shaped for just one thing to hold a soul its quick and few bendable hours perhaps a king not to hold snow not to hold flowers
Jane Hirshfield, A Cair in the Snow, Poetry (2006)
Da Capo
by Jane Hirshfield
Take the used-up heart like a pebble and throw it far out.
Soon there is nothing left. Soon the last ripple exhausts itself in the weeds.
Returning home, slice carrots, onions, celery. Glaze them in oil before adding the lentils, water, and herbs.
Then the roasted chestnuts, a little pepper, the salt. Finish with goat cheese and parsley. Eat.
You may do this, I tell you, it is permitted. Begin again the story of your life.
I wanted to be surprised.
by Jane Hirshfield
To such a request, the world is obliging.
In just the past week, a rotund porcupine, who seemed equally startled by me.
The (hu)man who swallowed a tiny microphone to record the sounds of their body, not considering beforehand how they might remove it.
A cabbage and mustard sandwich on marbled bread.
How easily the large spiders were caught with a clear plastic cup surprised even them.
I don’t know why I was surprised every time love started or ended. Or why each time a new fossil, Earth-like planet, or war. Or that no one kept being there when the doorknob had clearly.
What should not have been so surprising: my error after error, recognized when appearing on the faces of others.
What did not surprise enough: my daily expectation that anything would continue, and then that so much did continue, when so much did not.
Small rivulets still flowing downhill when it wasn’t raining. A sister’s birthday.
Also, the stubborn, courteous persistence. That even today please means please, good morning is still understood as good morning,
and that when I wake up, the window’s distant mountain remains a mountain, the borrowed city around me is still a city, and standing.
Its alleys and markets, offices of dentists, drug store, liquor store, Chevron. Its library that charges—a happy surprise—no fine for overdue books: Borges, Baldwin, Szymborska, Morrison, Cavafy.
(via poets.org)
2021 NPM Number 30 Jane Hirshfield - Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight
You can listen to the podcast version of this series on Spotify, ITunes, Anchor, (https://anchor.fm/steve-spanoudis) Look for the podcast titled National Poetry Month at the Other Pages.
Here is the direct link to the audio for this podcast: https://anchor.fm/steve-spanoudis/episodes/2021-NPM-30-Jane-Hirshfield-e106jed
This will be our last article for National Poetry Month. I hope you have enjoyed the series. I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Kashiana Singh and Nelson Howard Miller, who each contributed three thoughtful, varied articles, and also thank Kashiana for her three podcasts. Nelson helped out despite contracting Covid and being hospitalized, followed by surgery. Kashiana, despite being in the process of a cross-country move.
Today’s poem is a deceptively simple piece by American poet Jane Hirshfield, a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and author of nine books of poetry and two more of essays. Her writing is clear and conversational, even when, like today, the subject is a difficult one for us to put into words. The title of the poem seems simple and descriptive,
(https://poets.org/poem/three-foxes-edge-field-twilight) Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight, but as we have hopefully learned, something observed in the world around us can often reflect something else.
It starts out with:
One ran,
her nose to the ground,
a rusty shadow
neither hunting nor playing.
One stood; sat; lay down; stood again.
One never moved,
except to turn her head a little as we walked.
In this case, the narrator feels that the foxes’ behavior mirrors something about her own self. Perhaps her own fear, indecision, and wariness. Published when Hirshfield was forty-three, it suggests a changing viewpoint, or a turning inward - a personal transition:
There is more and more I tell no one,
strangers nor loves.
This slips into the heart
without hurry, as if it had never been.
Just as her metaphor, the foxes, disappear into the woods without a trace. The important part of what the poem is telling us is not that there has been a change, but that she, the narrator (the poet) has recognized that change. She ends with,
And yet, among the trees, something has changed.
Something looks back from the trees,
and knows me for who I am.
So I guess you could call this a poem of self-knowledge, of recognition that identity changes, and that we change, sometimes without knowing why.
We’ll end the series there for this year, on a thoughtful note, close to where we started, wondering how pandemic and isolation have altered our viewpoint, of the world, and of ourselves.
Thank you for Listening. If you’re enjoying these commentaries, and the poem selections, please share them - either the text versions or the podcasts - on social media.
Once again this is Steve Spanoudis at theotherpages.org. You can find more there, at The Other Pages on Facebook or Tumblr. The full text of this poem is available at Poets.org
(https://poets.org/poem/three-foxes-edge-field-twilight)
