Thursday Poem

Today I'm Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.  The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field, each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.  Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.  I will examine their leaves as pages in a text and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.  I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.  I shall begin scouring the sky for signs as if my whole future were constellated upon it.  I will walk home alone with the deep alone, a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries. 


by Edward Hirsch
from Lay Back the Darkness
Knopf/Random House, Inc