The Song

M A Y 1 9 8 6

by Jane Hirshfield

Hear Jane Hirshfield read this poem (in RealAudio):

RA 28.8, RA 14.4

(For help, see a note about the audio.)

Also by Jane Hirshfield:
Within This Tree (1991)
The Love of Aged Horses (1994)
Lying (1994)
Three Foxes by the Edge of the Field at Twilight (1996)
The Poet (1997)
Apple (1999)

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The tree, cut down this morning,
is already chainsawed and quartered, stripped
of its branches, transported and stacked.
Not an instant too early, its girl slipped away.
She is singing now, a small figure
glimpsed in the surface of the pond.
As the wood, if taken too quickly, will sing
a little in the stove, still remembering her.