Morning of buttered toast;
of coffee, sweetened with milk.
Out of the window,
snow-spruces step from their cobwebs.
Flurry of chickadees, feeding then gone.
A single cardinal stipples an empty branch-
one maple leaf lifted back.
I turn my blessings like photographs into the light;
over my shoulder the god of Not-Yet looks on:
Not-yet-dead, not-yet-lost, not-yet-taken.
Not-yet-shattered, not-yet-sectioned,
not-yet-strewn.
Ample litany, sparing nothing I hate or love,
not-yet-silenced, not-yet-fractured, not-yet-
Not-yet-not.
I move my ear a little closer to that humming figure,
I ask him only to stay.
— Jane Hirshfield, “Not Yet” in “Come, Thief: Poems“. (HarperCollins, April 5, 2011)
Notes: Photo of Red Northern Cardinal on January 1, 2025 by DK at noon in backyard. Poem via having a poem with you.
