A Scale Weighs the Outer World in Pounds and Ounces
A winch,
with its drag drum and hoist drum, is strong.
Grief is stronger,
yet weighs no more than the pattern
of leaf and sun on the bark of a tree.
Joy, too, is strong,
yet changes no more than the cloth of a curtain
pulled open rather than closed.
Emotion—handless and eyeless—
runs through the body like current through copper wire.
Equally innocent of its ends, equally voracious
A scale weighs the outer world in pounds and ounces.
The sum does not alter,
whatever happens within and between us.
One will feel this as a blessing, another as horror.
Jane Hirshfield
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