There's Hope for the Hopeless

Hope

Lisel Mueller

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.

***

I was just listening to a song called "There's Hope for the Hopeless" while I picked up my poetry book and happened to turn to a poem miraculously called "Hope." What a God-send.
I got some not-great news today. But I'm ok. I'm dealing with it, and despite my brush with rejection, I still have hope. I'm still trying. I'm still living. Even when my current situation is a little on the hopeless side. It truly is the "singular gift we cannot destroy in ourselves."