Hope is an underrated muscle,
seldom exercised.
Like hunger and thirst, hope
is both noun and verb.
Hope is a thirst that anticipates
the filling and overflowing.
Hope remembers unfolding
the vestigial muscle that ripples
with flight feathers. Hope
hungers for headwinds
and heavens,
raw energy
soaring above power lines,
where there’s no turning back.

I’m learning to sing chords
I didn’t know the bass notes would cut.
I thought I had one voice; now I have several.
A tree in winter changes pitch with the wind.
I’m trying to harmonize.
See how the branch snaps with the weight of the cold!

Blank spaces offer margins of error, cause to pause, space to reflect.
Here the eye decelerates, thoughts rein in. Here is room of one’s own!
Have you read the instructions on the back of the seed packet?
“Plant sweet pea seeds 1 inch deep and 2 to 3 inches apart.”

I remember how it was to type on my grandfather’s
heavy upright manual typewriter. When my words
were flush against the right margin of the paper,
however incomplete my sentence, I paused
as I reached for the lever, collecting my thoughts
as I swung it back in place. In that split second,
my train of thought often veered in a new direction.
The rhythm of reaching the right hand margin,
and then gliding over the page,
my hand suspended momentarily,
kept me on track as I reconsidered each step,
planting strings of words like seeds.
 

The heart’s aperture
is hope.

Frost, an opportunist,
slipped in through a crack.

Still I will keep
some room
in my heart
for you.

Sometimes we forget
that our bones, too,
are levers, articulated
to join both pelvis
and spine, so as
to move the world,
if we wanted.

To see the sun set
I need only take
one step out my back door
and peer across the alley
between two neighbors’ homes.
Tonight the colors are thick bands
of gold, salmon pink, red and blue—
Not subtle as watercolor,
but bold like fingerpainting.
The gold band glows liquid metal.
The neighbors’ two houses hold
the sunset in place
like two bookends.

Let each poem
be
a grain of sand.
Many grains of sand
create
an avalanche
but
even one grain
will do.
For one grain of sand
rubbing the sole
against the grain
is enough
to stop you
in your tracks.

When Atlas shouldered the world,
the deep force of gravity
held the oceans in place
against his firm muscles.
But Archimedes had a better idea:
to move the world with a lever.
“Give me whereon to stand,”
said Archimedes, “along with a lever,
and I will move the earth.”
My lever is my poetry,
my only means of moving you.

I have wandered among so many flowers,
and thorns, and rarely have I been stung.
I remember roses, their vintage fragrances,

their many shades of rose and pink.
I remember salty odor of grass,
green stains on my knees, pine pitch in my hair.

Even in the desert, the maroon and deep
goldenrod of Mexican hats brave the elements.
What a surprise to see them spring up each year,

through thick or thin, rain or no rain.
I have wandered among many fields and flowers
and rarely have I been stung.

I see you
clearly now
for what you are:
the glass
dividing our worlds
is transparent.
Your stinger
poised for
mortal combat
cannot penetrate
the barrier
that shields me
from your touch.
With one stroke
I raise a blade:
You go skirting off
the windshield, blindly.