What's Left
A poem
Only hope was left in the box Pandora opened, releasing sickness, calamity, and death. But hope can be tricky. I get it mixed up with expectation, which always gets me in trouble because I’m inevitably disappointed. In this poem I found hope betwixt and between.
Hope is a still whisper. Only if you lean in, hush the world’s noise, can you hear her voice in the scratch of squirrels playing up and down redwood’s trunk. Lying in bed awaiting sleep you might hear her in the owl’s brief call. She floats like dust motes in the corner of a room, as the quick blaze of sunlight between storm clouds, nasturtium growing through impossible fence boards. You’ll sense her in the hint of jasmine before you cross a busy street, essence of a neighbor’s rose, tang of an orange peel. Taste her in spring’s strawberry, honeyed juice of a peach, that first sip of coffee. She’s the down of a cat. dew of morning grass, solace of a foot reaching across to warm your own in the night. You can also read the poem on Feed the Holy, where it appeared on Friday, March 27.
It’s hard to see hope in the world right now. Each day brings new calamities, so much death and heartbreak. At times like these I have to look more closely, pay better attention, on a big scale yes but also to the ordinary, the simple, the smallest gesture. Where do you find hope?
I’ve been a bit betwixt and between myself so thank you for sticking with me through a difficult winter of occasional posts. And thank you so much for reading. If you would like to read more of my poetry, my book Gathering the Pieces of Days celebrates the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of our days. You can get your copy from Unsolicited Press, Bookshop.org, or Asterism. If you use this link to check out all the books at Unsolicited Press, I do get a small commission.
LeeAnn, you've taken one of the most abstract of words and let it settle among the concrete things we can recognize in daily life, that bring us beauty and, most important, enliven our senses - the noise of an owl, the touch of a cat's downy coat, the first taste of coffee - to the richness and wonder of life. That's difficult to do, particularly when what we see and feel every day is harm and suffering. Yours is an appropriate poem for Holy Week, because it holds promise of what goes on, is resurrected over and again.
The human sweetness of the little foot in the dark. What a tender poem about something always present, but not always felt.