Today’s Prompt is to use a standard phrase for the title of your poem, and then to respond to that.  I have to start working on these earlier in the day, before my brain starts to shut down.

Abandon Hope all Ye Who Enter Here
with apologies and thanks to Pema Chodron and Margaret Wheatley

“Hope. . . is not the conviction that something will turn out well,
but the certainty that something makes sense regardless
of how it turns out.”  –Vaclav Havel

I have a fierce attachment to hope,
to that inward knowing
that this boat will stay afloat no matter what.

I have a deep-rooted, heavy-booted fear
that in this moment
we are in the very act of sinking.

Like they say, the hope keeps me living,
living in the middle of the fear,
and paralyzed to move,
lest my shift cause this bark to sink.

Perhaps the future demands not hope,
but willingness to sleep with uncertainty.
That we lay our heads on pillows of rock,
and though we know not whether the day will dawn,
sleep soundly through the storm.

Though we know the fight is likely useless,
onward we fight because it makes sense
to hold our ideals no matter what we face.

Oh, I’ll hold hope in my pocket–
uncoupled from its sticky twin–
like a shiny copper penny,
like a talisman.

Gratitude List:
1. Mockingbird is back on stage, in rare form, full of gossip and outlandish tales.  He got me this morning–I started to say, “Killdeer!” before he was off on a riff about cardinal, before I realized it was him.
2.  Chickweed pesto
3.  Windflower and speedwell
4.  Cloud constellations (a term coined by my younger child)
5.  Joss found my glasses in the field when I was sure that they were gone for good.  No scratches.  Whew.

May we walk in Beauty!