All The Difficult Hours and Minutes - Jane Hirshfield

[Larry Robinson]

All The Difficult Hours and Minutes

All the difficult hours and minutes
are like salted plums in a jar.
Wrinkled, turn steeply into themselves,
they mutter something the color of  sharkfins to the glass.
Just so, calamity turns toward calmness.
First the jar holds the umeboshi, then the rice does.

	- Jane Hirshfield