Balance - A Poem by Jane Hirshfield

Balance is noticed most when almost failed of -

in an elephant's delicate wavering

on her circus stool, for instance,

or that moment

when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.

There are, too, its mysterious departures.

Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,

a metal bowl clangs to the floor,

the weight of drying water all that altered;

a painting vertical for years

one morning - why? - requires a restoring tap.

You have felt it disappearing

from your own capricious heart -

a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.

Already then inevitable,

the full collision,

the life you will describe afterward always as "after".