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Posts Tagged ‘hope’

Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on April 4, 2020| 4 Comments »

rm sneffels smile

Hope has holes

in its pockets.

It leaves little

crumb trails

so that we,

when anxious,

can follow it.

Hope’s secret:

it doesn’t know

the destination—

it knows only

that all roads

begin with one

foot in front

of the other.

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Sign of Inner Spring

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on April 3, 2020| 9 Comments »

IMG_6029

 

Every year the pussy willows

astonish me with their willingness

to be soft in a time when the rest

of the world is stick-ish and harsh and bare.

 

Sometimes softness is the key to survival.

I search for it in myself—the courage

to shed the hard shell I thought would protect me,

to shuck the hard shell that no longer fits,

and I marvel as something new emerges,

soft as pussy willows,

this vulnerable, practical hope.

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This Desperate Week, the Orchid Reminds Me

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on March 19, 2020| 3 Comments »

IMG_5939

 

 

It looked dead, the orchid.

After long extravagant glory,

the blossoms dropped quickly,

one by one. The stem shriveled,

dried. Every time I looked at it,

all I saw was what wasn’t there.

People said it would reset.

They said it needed rest,

a little bit of extra care.

But eight months later,

the plant still looked dead.

 

There are times we lose hope.

Times when our eyes tells us

we’re fools to believe beyond

what we see here now.

But from what seemed

like nothing, a long dark stem

appeared, lined with buds.

And what a fool I was to doubt,

to let the eyes lie to me.

Already they’ve remembered how to see

what will be. Already they remember

how to see the beauty

of exactly what is here.

 

 

 

 

 

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One Before Evening Comes

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 23, 2020| Leave a Comment »

 

 

in the dry field of hope

the rattling bugle of sandhill cranes—

the sky alive with great wings

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One Indestructible

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on February 6, 2020| 2 Comments »

 

 

just when the sledgehammer of no

takes its best shot,

finding in me an invincible yes

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How It Goes with Hope

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 15, 2020| 7 Comments »

Eventually a burning hope
becomes ember, becomes glow,
becomes gone.
Whatever fuel it found
is spent, is done, is ash.
Not that you blame hope
for losing its brilliance.
More that you become
increasingly intimate with what is.
What is is an absence. What is
doesn’t sit in your lap. What is
doesn’t come to the door.
What is is very quiet.
But there is, if not hope,
a tenderness that lingers,
a tenderness that has a glow
of its own, a tenderness
that you carry with you
until it becomes you,
a warmth, a golden light
there when you fall asleep,
still there when you rise.
*
(note: sweet friends, thank you for all the emails and even the lovely letter about the loss of our cat, Otter. I didn’t mean to leave you hanging. She has not returned, and I am quite sure she met a predator. But my dear friend Jack gave me the sweetest advice: Please, when you are ready, begin to—maybe for only a minute—carry Otter in your body. That invitation a couple weeks ago was the basis for the feeling that evolved into this poem. And here it is, evidence of the small ways that we help each other as we carry grief. Thank you all. Thank you.)

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Missing

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , 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.

 

 

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Perhaps a Chance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , 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.

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Slowly Learning

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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?

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Sometimes When I Despair

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , 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.

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