Because I love the poetry of Jane Hirshfield, I loved this interview with her on YouTube at “Jane Hirshfield at PoetryEAST”.

I return to many of her poems but this is one of my favorites. From watching this interview I learned that most of her poems come from what she’s experienced or seen.  This is not imagined.  It’s “real” though the leap of vision is hers, “To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me”.  

The Supple Deer

The quiet opening

between fence strands

perhaps eighteen inches.

Antlers to hind hooves

four feet off the ground

the deer poured through.

No tuft of the coarse white belly hair left behind.

I don’t know how a stag turns

into a stream, an arc of water,

I have never felt such accurate envy.

Not of the deer:

To be that porous, to have such largeness pass through me.  

– Jane Hirshfield