Winter 2001
	Jane Hirshfield
	Balance
	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 afterwards always as "after."