the fire that holds it all

three times my life has opened

by: jane hirshfield

"three times my life has opened.

once, into darkness and rain.

once, into what the body carries at all times within it and starts to remember each time it enters the act of love.

once, to the fire that holds all.

these three were not different.

you will recognize what i am saying or you will not.

but outside my window all day a maple has stepped from her leaves like a woman in love with winter, dropping the colored silks.

neither are we different in what we know.

there is a door. it opens. then it is closed. but a slip of light stays, like a scrap of unreadable paper left on the floor, or the one red leaf the snow releases in march."

-from her 1997 collection: "the lives of the heart"