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Eventually a burning hope |
Posts Tagged ‘hope’
How It Goes with Hope
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, grief, hope, loss, tenderness, what is on January 15, 2020| 7 Comments »
Missing
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged cat, hope, loss, paradox, poem, poetry, science on December 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Hope is, perhaps, a quantum thing,
a paradox, like Schrödinger’s cat,
simultaneously alive and dead.
Today, I wandered the snowy field
and the icy banks and the shadowed wood,
calling the name of my sweet gray cat.
If I could find her now, I’d see
she’s either alive or dead.
But in this moment of uncertainty,
she’s both alive and dead to me.
I’m tugged by both possibilities as I wade
through tall dry grass. Oh damn that hope,
and bless it, too, how just a candle-measure
opposes a whole tower of unfounded certainty,
sends me out into the blizzard
calling her name, listening.
Perhaps a Chance
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged candle, flame, hope, poem, poetry on December 4, 2019| Leave a Comment »
It’s not that way with all things. Some that go are gone.
—A.R. Ammons, “Eyesight”
And so it is that
even after the candle flame
is gone, yes, after
the flame is gone,
the carbon and unburned
wax vapor in the smoke
will still combust when touched
by a match, will travel down
the smoke and reignite
the wick. It sounds
like magic—looks like it,
too, a small ball of flame
dropping bright through the air.
So tonight when
my friend sends me
a video of just such
a marvel, I play it
again and again.
And all the burned out
wicks in me stand up
just a little bit straighter
and I stare at them
to notice if there is
still any smoke, and
my god, if I don’t just
run to the drawer
and find me
a box of matches,
their sticks brittle,
their tips as red
as hope.
Slowly Learning
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged experiment, hope, poem, poetry, rats, science on September 28, 2019| 2 Comments »
Most days I wake with hope,
which is to say a willingness
to keep trying. Just tonight
I read the study about rats
where they put them in glass jars
full of water. Most of them quickly
stopped swimming and drowned,
even the wild rats renowned
for being good swimmers.
But with the next round of rats,
the researcher from time to time
would put his hand in the jar
and lift the rats out. Just knowing
such a lift were possible was enough
to make the rats continue to swim
and they survived. And I wonder,
then, whose hand is lifting me these days,
reaching just often enough into my jar?
Sometimes When I Despair
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Beethoven, hope, impossible, poem, poetry, possibility on August 29, 2019| 5 Comments »
There are no barriers for a person with talent and love towards work.
—Ludwig van Beethoven
Everyone knows Beethoven
went deaf, could hardly hear
by the time he composed
the Moonlight Sonata.
I think of him sometimes
when I want to believe
in impossible things.
Like great harmony
born out of dead silence.
Like love in full bloom
despite drought.
Like finding a pocket in time.
Like hope, growing like mint.
In the Hummingbird Nest Outside My Window
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bird, hope, hummingbird, nature, nest, poem, poetry on July 6, 2019| Leave a Comment »
From eggs
the size
of small
jelly beans
come these
two beaks
that peak
beyond the
edge—today
they save
me, these
two tiny
wingless things.
Even this
bruised heart
remembers how
to marvel.
Some People Choose to Believe, Some Don’t
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged belief, hope, lie, parenting, poem, poetry, Santa on February 11, 2019| Leave a Comment »
The hope that is left after all your hopes are gone—that is pure hope, rooted in the heart.
—Brother David Steindl-Rast
And so tonight when my daughter says to me,
Mom, are you Santa Claus? I ask her if it
would make a difference, and she says, Yes.
I don’t want him to just be a hoax for making
kids be good. And I say, I’ve never thought of Santa
that way. I think of him as generous. And magic.
And she says, But magic’s not real, and I say,
Some magic is. And she says, Well, it would
make sense. You always know what we want
because you’re the mom. And I tell her,
It is my great privilege to work for Santa,
and she says, What do you mean? And I say,
Well, you know, buying presents. And she says,
Why do you think he didn’t bring us a big present
this year, like he did last year? And I hear
in her voice, against all fact, hope,
the hope that lingers when hope is gone,
a pure hope, the hope that goodness is real,
that there is generosity beyond comprehension,
that some magic is real. She rolls over in the dark.
I keep hope rooted in my heart.
Several Hours Before Dawn: Another Moon Poem
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, moon, poem, poetry, wonder on January 3, 2019| 2 Comments »
It appears still, the crescent moon,
but it’s moving at 2,288 miles per hour,
its light reaching us in less than two seconds.
This morning, we marvel at it, as if
we’d never seen moon before, its light
somehow touching us newly.
And though we are dashing down
the highway at fifty-eight miles per hour,
watching the moon, I feel something
in me quiet and still. Years ago, a friend told me
it was time to stop writing moon poems.
How to stop when each time
we see the moon, something new in us rises
to meet it? May we always write moon poems,
whether or not anyone reads them.
May we always marvel at the light
and shadow so far past our reach
and yet travelling with us
every day, every night. May it always feel
important, like hope, impossible to touch
and so real, so true.
How to Unshovel the Snow: An Evening Conundrum
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, poem, poetry, shoveling, snow, thoughts on December 27, 2018| 6 Comments »
It’s not so much that you want the snow
back in the drive, it’s just that your back
felt so much better before the shoveling,
and so, using your sideways logic, you think
to yourself that if the snow were unshoveled
your back might unhurt. And while
you’re at it, you think you might unthink
those thoughts you thought the night before
shoveling the drive. Though they didn’t
amount to any action, now that you’ve
thought them they’ve become a frame
that’s changed everything. So you start
with the snow, because revising that seems easier
than anything else, but to shovel it back
in the drive would seem to exacerbate
the problem with the back, so
you consider ways the snow might unfall,
all of them fanciful. At least for a while,
it amuses you, the idea of ten million
million snowflakes rising, but then
the reality of drought returns and you
feel guilty for unwishing the snow. No,
better to put your hope in perseverance,
better to put your hope in healing.
It happens. And you walk up the drive,
so snowless and clear you can safely look up
at the sky and see all those stars. The snow
gathers whatever light there is. It can’t
unshine. You thrill a bit in the chill. Some
of the shine reaches into you. Some of it stays.
On a Difficult Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fear, hope, poem, poetry, prayer, support on January 17, 2018| 13 Comments »
Because I don’t know how to pray,
I do what I know to do,
which is to sit very quietly
and let myself feel. To hold you
without holding you.
To imagine your fear
and breathe into it.
To feel my own fear
and walk the edges of its cliffs.
To lean on hope with its flimsy
net and feel how little it takes
to catch us, to save us.
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