Friday Poetry: Jane Hirshfield

Happy Friday Everyone!

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend.

My chosen poem this week is by the American poet, essayist and translator Jane Hirshfield (1953).

August Day

You work with what you are given -
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.

It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.

In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.

There are some who may think, "how pitiful, how 
lonely."
Others must murmer, "How lazy."

I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.

Jane Hirshfield