Poems / September 5, 2023

“A map grows no trees.”

—Alberto Blanco

Jane Hirshfield
Yet a thought is a forest.
Birds knock their heads against living tree trunks,
looking for living beetles.
 
This continual concussion 
must be why sureties so often confuse.
 
Mosses on the north side, leaves going up, 
roots going down,
and still for a lifetime I’ve kept getting lost.
Jane Hirshfield

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