Poem
Jane Hirshfield
Things keep sorting themselves.
Things keep sorting themselves.
Things keep sorting themselves.
Does the butterfat know it is butterfat,milk know it’s milk?
No.
Something just goes and something remains.
Like a boardinghouse table:
men on one side, women on the other.
Nobody planned it.
Plaid shirts next to one another,
talking in accents from the Midwest.
Nobody plans to be a ghost.
Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen.
Soon enough, they’ll be the ones
to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw.
But they don’t know that.
No one can ever know that.
© 2012, Jane Hirshfield
Poems
Poems of Jane Hirshfield
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Things keep sorting themselves.
Does the butterfat know it is butterfat,milk know it’s milk?
No.
Something just goes and something remains.
Like a boardinghouse table:
men on one side, women on the other.
Nobody planned it.
Plaid shirts next to one another,
talking in accents from the Midwest.
Nobody plans to be a ghost.
Later on, the young people sit in the kitchen.
Soon enough, they’ll be the ones
to stumble Excuse me and quickly withdraw.
But they don’t know that.
No one can ever know that.
Things keep sorting themselves.
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