I have been stepping into this new year . . . gently. I haven’t felt any of the new-year-new-you pressures that I sometimes have in years past. I’ve not been setting goals or thinking about a word or building a master to-do list for the year ahead . . . none of the trappings I usually associate with “beginning again” in January. I’m moving quietly, almost tip-toeing into my days, taking things as they come, focusing inward.

And . . . I like it.
It feels right and good.

When I found this poem last week, it spoke to me . . . to where I am and how I’m feeling right now, at the beginning of the year. Life is a back-and-forth kind of thing. What we need, what we desire, how we grow . . . it all ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows. That’s where I am right now. I want to keep growing, to keep changing, to accept and live into the question . . . what will I become.

I WOULD LIKE
By Jane Hirshfield

I would like
my living to inhabit me
the way
rain, sun, and their wanting
inhabit a fig or apple.

I would like to meet it
also in pieces,
scattered:
a conversation set down
on a long hallway table;

a disappointment
pocketed inside a jacket;
some long-ago longing glimpsed,
half-recognized,
in the corner of a thrift store painting.

To discover my happiness,
walking first
toward
then away from me
down a stairwell,
on two strong legs all its own.

Also,
the uncountable
wheat stalks,
how many times broken,
beaten, sent
between grindstones,
before entering
the marriage
of oven and bread—

Let me find my life in that, too.

In my moments
of clumsiness, solitude;
in days of vertigo and hesitation;
in the many year-ends
that found me
standing on top of a stovetop
to take down a track light.

In my nights’ asked,
sometimes answered, questions.

I would like
to add to my life,
while we are still living,
a little salt and butter,
one more slice of the edible apple,
a teaspoon of jam
from the long-simmered fig.

To taste
as if something tasted for the first time
what we will have become then.

Today’s poem was first published in the online arts publication Gwarlingo in 2021, and is also included in the poetry collection The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection and Joy, edited by James Crews and published in 2022 by Storey Publishing. You can read more about Jane Hirshfield and read some of her poems here.

Be gentle with yourselves!

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You can find A Gathering of Poetry every month . . . on the third Thursday.
Share some.
Read some.
Gather up some poetry!

(Bonny is hosting a special link-up for A Gathering of Poetry. Be sure to check it out!)