Hope (after Emily Dickinson)

Hope is a thing with feathers,
a nestling safe,
a poem roosting

In the night dark, blank
pages of my mind.
O, that it fledges

To take wing and fly
blithe, buoyant, light…
and I will live with a dream…

That of its will, it may
as a thing unchained, wild
someday stray my way,

Into my waiting being.
Hope is a quest to see,
that precious diamond dazzle

Of bright sunglint
In a liquidly alive
droplet of an eye

And for an instant know
(Oh, but for an instant know)
what it is to be

Joyously free




(From "Stray Birds")