Come, Thief is about those events in life that come along and steal away our sense of ourselves, that cause us to reexamine our lives, our joys, our griefs, our goals, our priorities. The “thief” in Jane Hirshfield’s poems can be something as momentous as sickness and death or it could be something as mundane as falling hopelessly in love or a long trip to a foreign city. But even though there’s always a “thief” in Hirshfield’s poems—an event stealing our identities—there’s also an openness to that “theft,” a willingness to reevaluate and change.