August Day
You work with what you are given —
today I am blessed, today I am given luck.
It takes the shape of a dozen ripening fruit trees,
a curtain of pole beans, a thicket of berries.
It takes the shape of a dozen empty hours.
In them is neither love nor love's muster of losses,
in them there is no chance for harm or for good.
Does even my humanness matter?
A bear would be equally happy, this August day,
fat on the simple sweetness plucked between thorns.
There are some who may think, "How pitiful, how lonely."
Other must murmur, "How lazy."
I agree with them all: pitiful, lonely, lazy.
Lost to the earth and to heaven,
thoroughly drunk on its whiskeys, I wander my kingdom.
Notes
Hirshfield captures the quiet, untethered ecstasy of an unwritten summer afternoon, where ripening fruit trees and a dozen empty hours dissolve the need for human ambition, grief, or purpose. It grounds August’s exploration of feast in a serene, unburdened solitude, showing how true abundance can mean stepping outside of love, loss, and moral judgment to simply wander drunk on the earth's raw sweetness. By aligning her spirit with a bear gorging on wild berries between thorns, the poem reminds us that the richest table is sometimes just time itself, and the deepest feast comes when we surrender to being utterly, beautifully useless. . #poetry #august #beauty #feast #life