​I’d love to see you in the Zoom room for one of our upcoming half-day creative writing workshops! Plenty of room in all; click here for all the details. 
August 18: Memoir in Moments
August 25: The Freedom of Form 
September 9: The Art of Writing Picture Books
September 10: Poetry, from Flicker to Flame 

Once, after a long time away, I returned to my tiny house in Vermont. It was early evening and I lay on the couch reading. Everything was quiet and still except for the turn of the pages.

This was when mice began to emerge from their hiding places. One crawled up the arm of the couch, another up the curtains next to me. One scuttled by in the hallway, another on the countertop.

More and more arrived. It came to me that this was their house too, theirs more than mine because I was hardly ever there. The silent woman on the couch, barely moving, was nothing to them.

In a Room with Many Windows, by Jane Hirshfield

In a room with many windows
some thoughts slide past uncatchable, ghostly.
Three silent bicyclists. Slowly, a woman on crutches.
It is like the night you slept out on the sandy edge of a creek bank,
feeling the step of some light, clawed thing on your palm,
crossing to drink. You were nothing to it.
Hummock. Earth clump. Root knob wild in the dark.
Like that thirsty creature, to you.
You could guess it, but you can’t name it. 


Click here for more information about Jane Hirshfield. Today’s poem first appeared in The Beauty, published in 2015 by Knopf. 
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