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.
Mowing by Ada Limón
The man across the street is mowing 40 acres on a small lawn mower. It's so small, it must take him days, so I imagine that he likes
it. He must. He goes around each tree carefully. He has 10,000 trees; it's a tree farm, so there are so many trees. One circle here. One circle there. My dog and I've been watching. The light's escaping the sky, and there's this place I like to stand, it's before the rise, so I'm
invis- ible. I'm standing there, and I've got the dog, and the man is mow- ing in his circles. So many circles. There are no birds or
anything, or none that I can see. I imagine what it must be like to stay hidden, disappear in the dusky nothing and stay still in the night. It's not sadness, though it may sound like it. I'm thinking about people and trees and how I wish I could be silent more, be more tree than anything else, less clumsy and loud, less crow, more cool white pine, and how it's hard not to always want something else, not just to let the savage grass grow. ~ from Bright Dead Things (Milkweed Editions, 2015)