“Highlights and Interstices”
We think of lifetimes as mostly the exceptional
and sorrows. Marriage we remember as the children,
vacations, and emergencies. The uncommon parts.
But the best is often when nothing is happening.
The way a mother picks up the child almost without
noticing and carries her across Waller Street
while talking with the other woman. What if she
could keep all of that? Our lives happen between
the memorable. I have lost two thousand habitual
breakfasts with Michiko. What I miss most about
her is that commonplace I can no longer remember.
—Jack Gilbert from The Great Fires (1996)
“Calling the Phoenix”
The artifacts with which you hope to summon
the bird are unassuming—pinecones, twigs,
a lump of dust the breeze keeps trying to steal—
common things to welcome the uncommon.
You chant some words. The morning gently drags
its plumage down the sidewalk. This is real,
but you are disappointed, wanting clearly
demarcated spectacle. All right,
the phoenix wasn’t quite what you expected,
no feathery bursts of ash or fingers nearly
burned down to the knuckle. Only light,
everyday light, and you here to collect it
with your eyes, your skin, your hands and hair—
real fire completing its unlikely flight.
You soak it up, still pouting, unaware.
—Hilary Biehl from Image Journal, Summer 2026
Jack Gilbert’s poems appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. His collections include Views of Jeopardy and Refusing Heaven, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award. “Highlights and Interstices” appeared in The Great Fires (Knopf, 1994).
Hilary Biehl’s poems have appeared in Blue Unicorn, Think, New Verse Review, and elsewhere. Her collection, Giants Crossing, was selected for publication through a juried poetry competition. “Calling the Phoenix” has not, so far, been republished beyond Image.
