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When I looked at the September calendar, I noticed the Autumn Equinox is on the 22nd. The first thing I thought of was being told as a kid that an egg can only be balanced on its end during an equinox due to a special alignment of the Sun and Earth during the equinox that creates a unique gravitational pull that stabilizes the egg. It is a myth. You can balance an egg on its end on any day of the year. The equinox has zero effect on gravity or an egg's physical properties.
My second thought was about poems concerning equinoxes and balance.
In her poem "Equinox," Elizabeth Alexander uses late-September imagery to reflect on the nature of life and mortality. The energy of the changing season, when "bees are wild and eccentric" as they fly during the last warm days balanced between summer and autumn.
Poems exploring balance often depict it as a delicate, active effort rather than a static state, using physical objects or shifting landscapes to mirror our inner lives.
In our model poem, "Balance" by Alice B. Fogel, from her collection Elemental, she doesn't define balance as calm or symmetry. She defines it as survival.
Balance is everything, is the only way to hold on.
But not holding on in the way we usually mean it. Not a safe grip, but a hover.
I've weighed the alternatives, the hold
as harbor: It isn't safe
to let go. But consider the hover,
choices made, the moment
between later and too late.
Balance is that suspended state: choices made, the moment between later and too late.
Consider how these other two balance poems define it: Balance by Adam Zagajewski, and "Balance" by Dorianne Laux.
Balance is not a static achievement but a momentary alignment, something we pass through, notice, and learn from. We don’t “arrive” at balance and stay there; we glimpse it. A period where work and rest feel proportionate, where inner life and outer obligations match pace, where identity feels neither shadowed nor overexposed. These moments are real but fleeting, and that doesn’t make them less meaningful.
Balance can be physical, like the equinox, an egg, learning to ride a bicycle, or a woman on a tightrope at the circus. In poems, it is more often internal, such as balancing a relationship, life and work, or our emotions. Sometimes, a poem contains both, with one reflecting on the other.
For September, we are seeking poems that focus on some time of balance.
Alice B. Fogel is a former theatrical costumer and clothing refashioner who earned a BA in art and literature from Antioch College and an MFA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire.
She is the author of Interval: Poems Based on Bach’s “Goldberg Variations, which won the Nicholas Schaffner Award for Music in Literature and the 2016 New Hampshire Literary Award in Poetry; and Be That Empty.
Fogel lives in Walpole, New Hampshire; works as a professor and one-on-one as an academic coach with neurodiverse students at Landmark College in Putney, Vermont; and hikes mountains whenever possible.
PRESENT INDICATIVE - FUTURE DUBIOUS
Isn't it time to cash in
those afterlife insurance policies?
Any nirvana, shangri-la or paradise
is a yearning-infested concept
to mask - or eradicate - our need
for justice in this world. JUSTICE
as in scales, surely you remember.
Christ knows why evenhandedness -
an equity unknown on this earthly plane -
is presumed to be acheived in the next
unless it be we cling to a thing as
an article of faith, an item beloved,
though it be no more than a festering
clump of feathers. If a heaven there is,
it is populated by bickering bishops,
militant missionaries, competing caliphs.
No, I want no unbalanced systems,
no disproportionate dogmas, no doctrines
that leave the mass of humanity
begging celestial or earthly masters
for crumbs in this life while they grope
for understanding, standing still,
on a bar of soap
on a treacherous slope
filled with prayerful longing
for half a chance at happiness
on some subsequent, hypothesized morning.
T.A.Deinhardt
A BALANCED ACCOUNT
A balanced account needs equality of voice
loud or sotto voce
equally heard
equivalent
not judged
but equally weighted and valued -
the accounts of the murderers
and the murdered
(if they could have a voice),
the accounts of the bombers
and the bombed
(if the scattered pieces could speak),
the accounts of the sinners
and the sinned against
(their reward is in some heaven),
the accounts based on knowledge
and those based on lies
(so hard to tell the difference).
Their weight may be balanced
until power intervenes
to tip the scales
in its direction.
A balance of power,
the weight of equals.
History weighs it up.
Lynn White
BALANCE OF A MICROSECOND
I’m running across pavement with my dog,
small dog but strong, who can balance
on her back for long periods tempting me
to stroke her tummy. At other times,
on her ever-busy cattledog feet, she can
change direction and speed in a blink
of an eye while my eyes are focused on my
feet, or on warps of pavement, or a bird
shadowing across our path. The two of us
are linked by leash, propelled by her speed.
And in an instant of inattention I’m off
balance between one footfall and the next,
no time to think about it, but somehow
my body has already saved me, decided
what to do with the foot that tripped
in synch with the other foot, and now
they’re planted solidly, two-foot grounded –
till my unpredictable dog gets moving again.
RECESS AT PS 185
An unstoppable wave of frenzied kids
break onto the schoolyard basketball courts
after pushing past Buddha, the lone fat boy.
He plods toward the quiet of the aging playground
and rests on a splintering wooden see-saw.
He takes a confirming glance at the half-courts,
at the reedy boys dressed in NBA merch,
too short to reach the rim, and levitates,
no wood below him, knowing that a lay up
is not the path to the bliss of balance.
Rob Friedman
ADVERSARIES
Your husband
visits you at night
the medium said.
I hear her words each evening
as I watch the fixture
above my table
swing back and forth
like the watch at the end
of a hypnotist's chain.
My grieving heart
believes my beloved
is talking to me
from an unmapped place
where travelers go
with a one-way ticket.
But my brain insists
the high rise I live in
is shaking its hips
in the winter wind
like a concrete-costumed
belly dancer.
My feelings and thoughts
sit on the seats
of a seesaw in motion,
never in balance,
and shape my days
like a question mark
despite fervent pleas
for stability.
Susan Spaeth Cherry
SEPTEMBER
There is nothing equal on this equinox..
No kind of balance, as in work / life.
No give-and-take that gives this
tug-of-war a brief stalemate.
On this day of equal light and darkness,
lasting for a moment, imperceptible
to us, like those moments in our life
when things are in balance
so briefly that we don’t notice
and in another moment we tilt and fall.
Katie Milburn
HOMEOSTASIS
It's a term we Family Therapists borrowed
From the biologists down the hall --
The guys who talk about mechanisms like
Vasoconstriction, insulin, feedback loops,
Our bodies use to keep complex systems
In a perpetual, if tenuous, state of balance
-- Body temperature, blood sugar, electrolytes
It's a juggling act, in the face of an
ever-changing, sometimes hostile world
When the process breaks down, we're in trouble
Fouled sails, broken rudder, at risk of foundering
Applied to Family systems, that balancing act
Refers to forces that strive to keep relationships
In their current state, whether healthy or not
My wife's quiet, calm, optimistic, peacemaking
Balances my verbal, anxious, pessimistic reactivity
— an asymmetric, Alexander Calder mobile,
Earth and Neptune dancing around a common Star
The pull of gravity keeping us in safe, familiar orbits
Our attempts to be different, met with unconscious
Countermeasures conspiring to maintain the status quo
We are ice dancers, wanting to improve our performance
Yet, afraid to risk crippling injury, we experiment
Try new moves, new combinations — twist an ankle
Skin a knee, regain our balance, if only for a moment
Frank Kelly
BALANCE OF TIME
Surrounded by the cacophonous din of wishes,
the raging flames of what-ifs, I witness the smoke of thoughts
that turn pungent. This fine line partitioning the burning horizon
of day from the dark curling edges of night around starlight
has a name - balance. Balance is what I dream
to inhale while the embers of seconds accumulate.
The winds fan the words into a firestorm of unwept tears.
But time announces - this depression too shall clear.
This too shall pass. The rains have arrived
drizzling in sated drops of change. I stretch
my arms, open my palms ready to touch all the notes
of the sky that fall like blessings into the cup of each breath.
Preeth Ganapathy
TIPPING THE SCALES
The yin and yang symbol emerged in China,
The Middle Kingdom, three thousand years
Ago, but the concept of Cosmic Balance
Is even older. Ancient places—
Persia, Athens, Ephesus, and Alexandria
Sought symmetry for sacred spaces, and
On the Silk Road, tools were needed to keep
Order: scales, clocks and calendars.
The Romans invented the cross to facilitate
The orderly death of a human person:
Two planks intersect, and at the center point,
Dexter and sinister are aligned, so when the
Final breath has been expelled, the head will
Fall forward, the chin landing exactly between
The collar bones.
But can the soul be balanced?
On this perfectly circular world, there are mazes
And caves, wayward rain, chipped chalices, crooked
Roads, cracked cups and uneven brush strokes.
Dawn and dusk are messy. The colors shift from
Deep blood red to the shimmering magenta of a
Royal gramma, darting through the jagged reef
While the clouds become swans, feathering the
Sky white, or fluffy sheep, gray as mottled
Pebbles in a river. No one knows what follows.
When the senses suspend, a weightless fragrance
Might linger. An owl’s echo could momentarily
Remain, while a new light releases the misshapen
Human heart as the imprisoned Spirit lifts
Into the pure, unmeasurable glory beyond the air,
Suddenly obsolete.
Rose Anna Higashi