Hope - Richard Schiffman

[Larry Robinson]

Hope 

Hope is not about some future meadow, 
Hope is no triumphal march toward some brighter,
bloodless field. Neither lighting a candle, 
nor cursing the darkness, nor calling the glass half full-- 
hope is this half-empty tumbler turning cartwheels 
above the chasm. You, for example--
poised above your own private precipice, 
bruised and bloodied, sifting through the ashes 
of ten thousand burnt offerings. 
Don’t scatter those ashes. Don’t stuff the corpses 
into body bags just yet. Don’t launch a fleet 
of skyrockets to cheer up Gehenna. Don’t pretend 
that you’re still hungry, like those battle-blind birds
pecking for seeds between the corpses. 
Hope is not an appetite for this or that concocted future. 
It is the present seeking itself, the present-- 
unlearning the past, agnostic of the future-- 
breathing, in its chains, like the sea.

	- Richard Schiffman
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