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Writer's pictureQuique Autrey

I'm Going to Start Living Like a Mystic

poem by Edward Hirsch



Today I am pulling on a green wool sweater

and walking across the park in a dusky snowfall.


The trees stand like twenty-seven prophets in a field,

each a station in a pilgrimage—silent, pondering.


Blue flakes of light falling across their bodies

are the ciphers of a secret, an occultation.


I will examine their leaves as pages in a text

and consider the bookish pigeons, students of winter.


I will kneel on the track of a vanquished squirrel

and stare into a blank pond for the figure of Sophia.


I shall begin scouring the sky for signs

as if my whole future were constellated upon it.


I will walk home alone with the deep alone,

a disciple of shadows, in praise of the mysteries.



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