“ 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 learned early on
that the vulnerability of
putting words on a page
. . .even if that page
is crumbled
is unlined
is torn
is just-in-time-saved
from the bottom of a dirty waste paper can
is not just merely
p o e t r y
but . .
H O P E
at its best
. . .even if it’s just because of the vast amount of critics
WE ARE ALL POETS

No blank page is ever really needed
to write a poem
. . .P O E T R Y
begats
P O E T R Y
. . .hence:

A Voice
not heard
A Scent
not smelled
A Beauty
not seen
A Delicacy
not tasted
A Touch
not felt
An Intuition
not realized
And for all of the 
jumbled
tumbled
tangled
N O T S
The holy common
Y  E  T
is
unexplainably still
e x p e r i e n c e d
h o p e

H O P E
. . .it is in the poem trying to speak