Windowsills evenly welcome
both heat and cold.
Radiators speak or fall silent as they must.
Doors are not equivocal
floorboards do not hesitate or startle.
Impatience does not stir the curtains,
a bed is neither irritable nor rapacious.
Whatever disquiet we sense in a room
we have brought there.
And so I instruct my ribs each morning,
pointing to hinge and plaster and wood —
You are matter, as they are.
See how perfectly it can be done.
Hold, one day more, what is asked.
~ Jane Hirshfield, from “A Room” from “The Lives of the Heart: Poems”
Painting, Poul Anker Bech (Danish, 1942-2009), “Sun Dreams”, 1973 via Huariqueje
