Posted in Uncategorized, tagged chanterelles, hope, mushroom hunting, poem, poetry on August 15, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Just as you give up,
there, through the trees,
you see a clearing
and though it’s exhausting
to be hopeful again
when there’s so little
to show for your hope,
you walk to the clearing
and there in the moss,
hundreds of chanterelles.
When you leave
to reenter the broken world,
some of the hope
sticks to you like tiny burrs,
able to seed themselves
anywhere you carry them.
By noon, nearly everything
seems possible.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, poem, poetry, rainbow on July 20, 2017| Leave a Comment »
double rainbow to the east—
I stand in the rain and watch
as its colors deepen—
something small inside me
grows brighter, bright enough
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged hope, poem, poetry on June 1, 2017| 2 Comments »
Be joyful, though you have considered all the facts.
—Wendell Berry
On this gray morning,
I want to give you
the yellow of the oriole,
the way it weaves through
the invisible weight of the air.
So much touches us
that we can’t see,
and we wonder why
we feel heavy.
I would give you, too,
the gray whirr of the wings
of the hummingbird,
their improbable accuracy
as they negotiate the world
in search of what is sweet,
and I would give you
your own fine feet
still learning to master
one step at a time
and the long pause
in between.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emergency, hope, moon, poem, poetry on March 21, 2017| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged desperation, hope, lemon, poem, poetry on March 19, 2017| 2 Comments »
But darn if that scent of lemon
isn’t just so yellow, and though
I meant to write about the squeeze
of fear, there’s that bright perfume
on my fingertips and all I can think
is how full of sunshine it is, that scent,
though the room is dark,
though the last thing I thought
I could write about tonight
was hope.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged emergence, hope, mine, poem, poetry on July 14, 2016| 1 Comment »
We sat in the stope, a small room
chiseled and blasted into the stone
1,800 feet below the surface.
Imagine, he says, it is 1899.
First the guide turned out the light.
Then he blew out the candles.
As we sat in the dark, he told us
that only those with a good memory
of how they got in here
would make it back out alive.
Then he turned back on the light.
Sometimes in a darkness,
we feel ourselves trapped,
find ourselves unable
to grope our way back
to some beginning.
In our attempts to emerge
we become increasingly lost.
Sometimes in a darkness,
we come to believe it will always
be dark. How could we know
to hope that by some strange
luck or chance or change
a light might appear
so bright that we would never
again lose our way?
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged autumn, frost, garden, hope, poem, poetry on September 22, 2015| 1 Comment »
Already the frost has come,
both intricate and merciless,
and it has taken the basil,
the green beans, the zinnias
and whatever hope we had
that summer might never end.
We knew our hope was irrational,
but that’s never stopped a hope before.
Every day there’s more evidence
against hope—the headlines,
the angry boy down the street,
the child bride in Afghanistan.
And still it rises up, slightly
browned, but still shining
like that marigold bloom that was hiding
beneath a sunflower leaf—
it should be frosted and dead, but
it’s not. Damn hope. Never
acting the way we think it will.
May it trick us forever into choosing
to live another day. And after a long winter
when we’re sure it’s gone, may it always
reseed, putting up dozens of starts.
Not all of them will make it. Some will.
