kitchen scales,
I place on one side
all the scraps memory
has left me, as if I could make
a meal of them;
and on the other, all
I can surmise of the indelible
future: anniversaries,
losses. On one side I place
my mother's suede glove -
that emptied udder;
on the other the mitten
my grandson just dropped -
a woolen signpost he'll soon
outgrow. He is three;
she has been gone three years
exactly. Equilibrium is simply
that moment when the present
is as real as the past
or the future, when the air
that nourishes us
we breathe
without thinking.
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by Linda Pastan, 1995
