A person protests to fate:
"The things you have caused
me most to want
are those that furthest elude me."

Fate nods.
Fate is sympathetic.

To tie the shoes, button a shirt,
are triumphs
for only the very young.
the very old.

During the long middle:

conjugating a rivet
mastering tango
training the cat to stay off the table
preserving a single moment longer than this one
continuing to wake whatever has happened the day before

and the penmanships love practices inside the body.


About this poem
"Much that once seemed impossibly difficult is later taken for granted; then, in age, it becomes again hard. For most of a life, the fingers only feel unmanageable if, say, at 40 or 50 you decide to learn guitar or piano.

"The unreachable is the magnet of desire. We long to long. Some things, though, are outside all this. No matter our own will or wish, they reach for us-a great love, the unwriteable poem, all that becomes our own soon-enough-to-be-finished fates."
-Jane Hirshfield

About Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is the author of two new books, "The Beauty" (Knopf, 2015) and "Ten Windows: How Great Poems Transform the World" (Knopf, 2015). She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and lives in the Bay Area.

***
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day[at]poets.org.


(c) 2015 Jane Hirshfield. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate