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Measure

Measure

By Robert Hass b. 1941 Robert Hass

Recurrences.

Coppery light hesitates

again in the small-leaved

Japanese plum. Summer

and sunset, the peace

of the writing desk

and the habitual peace

of writing, these things

form an order I only

belong to in the idleness

of attention. Last light

rims the blue mountain

and I almost glimpse

what I was born to,

not so much in the sunlight

or the plum tree

as in the pulse

that forms these lines.

Robert Hass, “Measure” from Field Guide. Copyright © 1973 by Robert Hass. Reprinted with the permission of Yale University Press, http://www.yale.edu/yup/.

Source: Field Guide (1973)

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Poet Robert Hass b. 1941

POET’S REGION U.S., Western

Subjects Nature, Arts & Sciences, Trees & Flowers, Poetry & Poets