Perfect Balance

 I must have a hundred or more poems saved in my 'Poems and Quotes' folder. But they're not in any order, so when I go looking for a poem to use, which I have been because I haven't shared a poem for awhile, I have to look through them all. Yesterday I was looking for a poem about winter but gave up.

This morning FB gave me a post of the poets lost in 2021 with a snippet of a poem by each. I liked the stanza next to the last poet listed, Adam Zagajewski, and went looking for the poem it was from.  I found it was the last lines of his poem 'Balance'. 

Balance (Adam Zagajewski)

I watched the arctic landscape from above
and thought of nothing, lovely nothing.
I observed white canopies of clouds, vast
expanses where no wolf tracks could be found.

I thought about you and about the emptiness
that can promise one thing only: plenitude—
and that a certain sort of snowy wasteland
bursts from a surfeit of happiness.

As we drew closer to our landing,
the vulnerable earth emerged among the clouds,
comic gardens forgotten by their owners,
pale grass plagued by winter and the wind.

I put my book down and for an instant felt
a perfect balance between waking and dreams.
But when the plane touched concrete, then
assiduously circled the airport's labryinth,

I once again knew nothing. The darkness
of daily wanderings resumed, the day's sweet darkness,
the darkness of the voice that counts and measures,
remembers and forgets.