Heat

By Jane Hirshfield b. 1953 Jane Hirshfield

My mare, when she was in heat,

would travel the fenceline for hours,

wearing the impatience

in her feet into the ground.

Not a stallion for miles, I’d assure her,

give it up.

She’d widen her nostrils,

sieve the wind for news, be moving again,

her underbelly darkening with sweat,

then stop at the gate a moment, wait

to see what I might do.

Oh, I knew

how it was for her, easily

recognized myself in that wide lust:

came to stand in the pasture

just to see it played.

Offered a hand, a bucket of grain—

a minute’s distraction from passion

the most I gave.

Then she’d return to what burned her:

the fence, the fence,

so hoping I might see, might let her free.

I’d envy her then,

to be so restlessly sure

of heat, and need, and what it takes

to feed the wanting that we are—

only a gap to open

the width of a mare,

the rest would take care of itself.

Surely, surely I knew that,

who had the power of bucket

and bridle—

she would beseech me, sidle up,

be gone, as life is short.

But desire, desire is long.

Source: Of Gravity and Angels (Wesleyan University Press, 1988)

Biography

Award-winning poet, essayist, and translator Jane Hirshfield is the author of several collections of verse, including Come, Thief (2011), After (2006), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot prize, and Given Sugar, Given Salt (2001), a finalist for the National Book Critics Award, among others. Hirshfield has also translated the work of early women poets in collections such as The Ink Dark Moon: Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi . . .

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