The balance of our life changes and we don't control it - "Balance", A poem by Jane Hirschfield

Balance
- Jane Hirschfield

Balance is noticed most when almost failed of -
in an elephant's delicate wavering
on her circus stool, for instance,
or that moment
when a ladder starts to tip but steadies back.
There are, too, its mysterious departures.
Hours after the dishes are washed and stacked,
a metal bowl clangs to the floor,
the weight of drying water all that altered;
a painting vertical for years
one morning - why? - requires a restoring tap.
You have felt it disappearing
from your own capricious heart -
a restlessness enters, the smallest leaning begins.
Already then inevitable,
the full collision,
the life you will describe afterward always as "after"