Ode to Jane Hirshfield

Inside the Metal, all things blossom.

Even the last amoeba, touched on all sides,

Plankton fully immersed in their fate.

These mail-order tulips,

More and more created each year, worn paper-thin,

And the lizard-cool fruit growing outside the door,

Not to escape the passionate,

Vanquished gods, who, the Greeks told us,

Hated our own happiness with an inexplicable heat.

In the zendo, then the clink,

Full of the dittering of children and thunkety tennis balls,

By the flash of fish in their flashing autumn streams.

The tuneless anthem of Frog,

As it hummed to those alchemists.