Hope

HOPE
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

“Hope” by Lisel Mueller from Alive Together. © Louisiana State University Press, 1996.

I have a file where I save poems for my Friday blog. This one was posted by Parker Palmer in late July and felt apropos for today. He wrote by way of introduction:

“Today’s poet, Lisel Mueller (1924-2020), knew all about the threat of far-right politics, aka fascism. In 1939, her family fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the U.S., where she eventually won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.

In this poem, she reminds us that hope is a fundamental dynamic in all forms of life, a way to name the energy keeps creating more life, one small act at a time, even in the face of very long odds.

She’s urging us to be sources of hope, sources of a deep resolve “not to betray one another.” I can think of no line that better sums up what’s at stake in the upcoming election. Let’s keep fomenting new life in any way we can. Much depends on it.”

Yes. I hope, with prayers, for my friends south of the border. For all who are suffering from the destruction of war and weather, illness and death. For us all.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.