Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."
I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.
What Can’t Be Seen by Lorna Crozier
After sunset I walk under spruce boughs, looking for the owl the others saw midday. Huge, they said, it took up so much being, so much heartspan in the air. Whoo whoo, I move toward it, no moon or stars, my way snow-lit. Above the branches foxed in blacker than the sky, I hope to see its ears in silhouette, the shoulder-shrug of wings. Whoo, whoo, louder now, then nothing. It seems just in front of me and high. Beneath the trees, I stand inside my many years, inside the owl’s deep hearing— it’s hush, my hush, circling out and out and touching our grey heads. Let this be the what-I-don’t-see I die with, this feathered, thick-lapped listening of the night. ~ from Whetstone (McClelland and Stewart Ltd, 2005)