Poetry March 2006 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE

Pyracantha and Plum

By Jane Hirshfield

Last autumn's chastened berries still on one tree,
spring blossoms seeming tender,
hopeful, on another.
The view from this window
much as it was ten years ago, fifteen.
Yet it seems this morning
a self-portrait both clearer and darker,
as if while I slept some Rembrandt or Brueghel
had walked through the garden, looking hard.

Jane Hirshfied's new collection, After has just been published. She received an Academy Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets in 2004.