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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.
~by Lisel Mueller (1924-2000)
In 1939, Mueller and her family fled Nazi Germany and emigrated to the U.S., where she eventually won a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize for her poetry.
I appreciate her reminder that hope is a fundamental dynamic in all forms of life.
May we keep noticing it and naming it. Let us be in the business of creating more life, one small act at a time, against all odds. May we be sources of life, committed "to not betray one another," but strive for deeper connections and sense of belonging to one another.
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