Poet Jane Hirshfield said "... the feeling I have about poem-writing (is) that it is always an exploration, of discovering something I didn't already know. Who I am shifts from moment to moment, year to year. What I can perceive does as well. A new poem peers into mystery, into whatever lies just beyond the edge of knowable ground."

I bring a different poem to the writing classes each week, not only to inspire but to introduce new poets to the group members.

A Boat by Margaret Atwood

Evening comes on and the hills thicken; 
red and yellow bleaching out of the leaves. 
The chill pines grow their shadows.

Below them the water stills itself, 
a sunset shivering in it. 
One more going down to join the others.

Now the lake expands 
and closes in, both.   T

he blackness that keeps itself 
under the surface in daytime 
emerges from it like mist 
or as mist.

Distance vanishes, the absence 
of distance pushes against the eyes.

There is no seeing the lake, 
only the outlines of the hills 
which are almost identical,

familiar to me as sleep, 
shores unfolding upon shores 
in their contours of slowed breathing.

It is touch I go by, 
the boat like a hand feeling 
through shoals and among 
dead trees, over the boulders 
lifting unseen, layer 
on layer of drowned time falling away.

This is how I learned to steer 
through darkness by no stars.

To be lost is only a failure of memory.

~from Selected Poems II: 1976-1986 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1987)