Poem: Jane Hirshfield
I often look to poetry when things are rough or confusing. The language is condensed and can be interpreted in a variety of ways, ways that really speak to your moment, ways that have a medicinal quality sometimes. I particularly like poetry that is reminiscent of a Buddhist koan, or question posed to take one deeper into understanding and enlightenment. Jane Hirshfield’s poem All the Difficult Hours and Minutes is such a poem. I hope you enjoy it.
All the Difficult Hours and Minutes
All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.
