Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Hope

I was sent this marvelous poem today:

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 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.

 ~ Lisel Mueller ~
 (Alive Together: New and Selected Poems)

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