12 Aug
2016
Posted in: Poems
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There Is a Moment

2 doorsThe Decision
by Jane Hirshfield

There is a moment before a shape
hardens, a color sets.
Before the fixative or heat of kiln.
The letter might still be taken
from the mailbox.
The hand held back by the elbow,
the word kept between the larynx pulse
and the amplifying drum-skin of the room’s air.

The thorax or an ant is not as narrow.
The green coat on old copper weights more.
Yet something slips through it–
looks 
around,
sets out in the new direction, for other lands.
Not into exile, not into hope. Simply changed.
As a sandy track-rut changes when called a Silk Road:
it cannot be after turned back from.

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