Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘hope’

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Read Full Post »

On a Difficult Day

 

 

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.

 

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

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.

 

Read Full Post »

 

 

double rainbow to the east—

I stand in the rain and watch

as its colors deepen—

something small inside me

grows brighter, bright enough

Read Full Post »

Hope always comes easier

when it’s morning.

When birds are already weaving

their music through the trees.

Easier when dew

glitters on the leaves.

Easier when the world is warming.

In these ripening moments

it’s hard to remember

was it only hours ago

how darkness poured over you

like oil in the ocean.

Nothing seemed possible then.

But here is the bright red neck

of morning, humming through

shadows on emerald wings,

and here you are,

rising to meet it, not

because you want to, but

because something in you rises

and carries you with it into the day.

Read Full Post »

Before the Sun Returns

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

we cannot 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 joy

your own fine feet

still learning to master

this art of moving

across the world

one step at a time,

this art of living into the pause

between footsteps—

that moment when

the body lifts

as if we, too, could fly.

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.

Read Full Post »

One Emergence

 

 

 

no moon in the sky

reaching for it anyway—

a siren wails in the night

Read Full Post »

 

 

 

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.

Read Full Post »

Mine Tour

 

 

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?

 

 

Read Full Post »

« Newer Posts - Older Posts »