Hope is a Thing with Feathers

In these kinds of times, when the news blares about violence, riots in cities like Vancouver and London famed for their kind and gentle citizens, about ski trips up and down the Dow, about real people having their jobs and houses taken away from them…

This is when we cling to a foolish hope. A thing with feathers.

As writers, we already cling to foolish hopes. Hopes that someone, somewhere will read our words, that they will connect with them, that our words will go out into the world and do something bigger and better than we can do ourselves with our physical bodies. Poets, especially, are considered foolish. (Erasmus had a book, In Praise of Folly, that I just love, which talks about foolishness of various kinds.) We cling to the hope that our poems might earn us enough to buy us a pair of shoes, a dinner out, or at least cover our postage costs and various fees.

We hope that the people we love find happiness, that our jobs might lead to better things for ourselves and our families, that our bodies will not betray us. We strive every day when we wake up to enter the day with hope. And that is good work.

Hope keeps us aware that kindness is what holds humanity together; selfishness tears us apart. In times like these, we must hope more than the situation might seem to warrant. We must write with hope, and love with hope, we must have hope for our world, and the people in it. We must push ourselves to have hope. Let us glue the feathers on if we must.