Poem Response 17

Uncertainty

-Edward Hirsch

We couldn’t tell if it was a fire on the hills

Or the hills themselves on fire, smoky yet

Incandescent, too far away to comprehend.

And all this time we were traveling toward

Something vaguely burning in the distance-

A shadow on the horizon, a fault live-

A blue and cloudy peak, which never seemed

To recede or get closer as we approached.

And that was all we knew about it

As we stood by the window in a waning light

Or touched and moved away from each other

And turned back to our books, But it remained

Even so, like the thought of a coal fading

On the upper left-hand side of our chests,

A destination that we bore within ourselves

And there were those- were they the lucky ones? -

Who were unaware of rushing toward it

And the blaze awaited them, too.

Found on page 99 of “The Living Fire – New and selected poems” by Edward Hirsch

There was so much to this poem! And to me, as I read the first few lines, he seemed to be describing an uncertain situation itself. How sometimes, while walking a journey in our lives, we can look ahead and see a bend in the road, or a point that we know will mark uncertainty. Though “a destination that we bore within ourselves” is the place we hope to end up on the other side, before we can get there, we have to go through this place of unmarked territory. 

Sometimes it takes a while to get to that point which marks the beginning of our uncertain trail. We know we’ll have to walk it at some point, but in the mean time, we turn “back to our books”, back to the things we know as certain. Yet, all the while, “It remained… like the thought of coal fading in the upper left-hand side of our chests” The knowledge that soon the certain things in our lives will fade; the fire that burns in our hearts through the passion of things we know to be true will be tested and tried, and some of it will fade away… It can be an intimidating experience, when the things we love are tested and we realize that we don’t have the burning fire behind our thoughts of them anymore… in fact, it can be altogether scary. But it’s something that is necessary for us to grow, and for us to reach the destination we’re supposed to attain.

And in the end, no matter how terribly hard reaching our destination had been, somehow the journey does end up changing us from the inside out. Daunting as it may be, going through those times of uncertainty have a way of making us who we are…