The Poet by Jane Hirshfield (reprinted with permission) She is working now, in a room not unlike this one, the one where I write, or you read. Her table is covered with paper. The light of the lamp would be tempered by a shade, where the bulb's single harshness might dissolve, but it is not; she has taken it off. Her poems? I will never know them, though they are the ones I most need. Even the alphabet she writes in I cannot decipher. Her chair�-- let us imagine whether it is leather or canvas, vinyl or wicker. Let her have a chair, her shadeless lamp, the table. Let one or two she loves be in the next room. Let the door be closed, the sleeping ones healthy. Let her have time, and silence, enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

Jane, Let there be light. Yours, Ted