These are a couple of short poems I wrote about home and about hope and about how, more often than not, those two are the exact same thing. One of my favourite poems about hope is Hope is a thing with feathers by Emily Dickenson. Because Hope is a thing with feathers, and its home—its nest—is always the warmest of all places, no matter how bright the sun in the endless sky shines.
It’s easy to love, when you’ve loved all your life, but—
Is that curl of expectation
easy as it falls in front of the
fiery golden orb
as it reflects the brighter in the sky.
You have honeyed eyes burning like the sun.
Both concealed by clouds. Is that
cloud of confusion easy?
Untouched of all knowledge, and thus
kind. Is that orb, is it’s twin
Visible? Can you see how it sees you?
And my laughter that you mirror, and you echo
and the dreams, that reflect, and complete,
What’s behind those twin orbs, and the words that—
‘It’s family’. It’s easy to love
when you’ve loved all your life.
But the fury? And the weakness?
The bending back, before lashing out, and there:
the recoiling back again?
That’s got to be hard?
And the fury and it’s becoming.
The weakness in what it preserves, in where it’s soft.
There’s a tender spot on the wall you’ve laid down
on water, and it smarts whenever there’s a ripple.
Is this difference, the fights, the forgetting then remembering—
Are all these faults easy to love?
Would it stop me anyway?
Isn’t it exhausting?
How we dance around things
like they’re bombs waiting to be stepped on.
And how we swish past words
that are arrows lying on restless tongues.
Is it only that I can’t hate you
or is there more to love.
Or is love the arrows that we swallow
and the dance.
And that I don’t need memory to know the steps.
And that you sing along without knowing the song.
I might step on your toe.
You might stumble away.
We will, at last, misstep, and it will all blow up, of course.
But we can always build again. Start again.
The music’s not going anywhere.
Darkness tinged with ice is lazy,
sluggish, slow and slithery, sleepy grief. Dawn rises,
the colour of raging fire but it doesn’t melt the ice.
Some hands are empty, dangling in the time between these two,
reaching out for both the ice and the flame.
Some hands are always cold, always
wanting to hold something—a cup of hot coffee,
the world, the sun,
some hope.
Baby birds don't know,
that they have to pick up the worms to eat.
They just wait with open mouths for the worms to jump in.
Because that's what the worms have been doing all along.
Because that's what being fed by the birds feels like.
Because when you're a young sparrow in a nest,
life is too easy, and hope is a foreign thing.
Because who needs hope
when you have parents.
The idea of flying away
never did appeal me that much anyway.
And if I could, I’d be a tiny sparrow in a nest forever,
Because what is the sky
to scrapes of love being fed to you everyday.
(And now it’s about Peter Pan all over again.)
But the world isn’t getting any younger,
and we won’t either. So flying away is a must,
the thing is to never lose sight of the tree. Because
some hands are always seeking warmth—a cup of hot coffee,
another hand, a fireplace,
a home.
When a sparrow stares out a cage,
there is wistfulness, there is rage.
When the world outside stares back in,
it’s a mirror, a conversation engaged.
‘Nothing changes here,’ says the sparrow, because
nothing does, ‘except me.’
When you stare out into the world,
you are staring at a memory, because
the world is long gone.
An impression remains like that of a bulb which flashes still
even if you close your eyes—life is just a memory of
god knows who, maybe it’s someone you become,
someone you never meet.
If you want to read similar poems, fill your day with the power of words that pour into your heart as you read and rhyme, try Enchanting Poems About Mothers to Capture Their Unconditional Love.
