Hope

The holiday weekend is fast approaching, and while I have to work, I hope the rest of you will have a chance to relax and appreciate your friends, families, and the freedom which makes all this possible. There are several friends both in my personal circle, as well as in cyberspace who are struggling with some serious personal challenges. For you, especially, I offer the following poem.

 

HOPE

 

Teasing it out, buying bread

And trying to buy time,

Watching the giddy shine

Of humming bird

Returning to the bee-balm,

The lowering storms

Riding over and past us,

And the monarchs, their figured wings

Vivid as stained glass,

Gliding, hanging on for the full count

like last batters in the

in the bottom of the ninth,

or discrete cells

intact beneath the microscope,

and everywhere the dead

waking in the proffered resurrection

of midsummer hosta and mint,

cannas and black-eyed susans,

marigolds and the sun,

with jeweled exactitude

rising on the brimming

mornings of the world.

 

Carol Tufts