<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Counting, This New Year’s Morning, What Powers Yet Remain To Me</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">The world asks, as it asks daily: </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class=""><i class="">And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?</i></span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">I count, this first day of another year, what remains. </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">I have a mountain, a kitchen, two hands. </span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Can admire with two eyes the mountain, </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">actual, recalcitrant, shuffling its pebbles, sheltering foxes and beetles.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Can make black-eyed peas and collards.</span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Can make, from last year’s late-ripening persimmons, a pudding.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Can climb a stepladder, change the bulb in a track light.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">For four years, I woke each day first to the mountain, </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">then to the question.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">The feet of the new sufferings followed the feet of the old, </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">and still they surprised.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">I brought salt, brought oil, to the question. Brought sweet tea, </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">brought postcards and stamps. For four years, each day, something.</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Stone did not become apple. War did not become peace. </span><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Yet joy still stays joy. Sequins stay sequins. Words still bespangle, bewilder. </span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Today, I woke without answer. </span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">The day answers, unpockets a thought from a friend</span><br class=""><br class=""><i class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">don’t despair of this falling world, not yet</span><br class=""><br class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">didn’t it give you the asking</span></i><div class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class=""><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;" class="">Jane Hirshfield</span></div></div></body></html>