Jackie McManus

Hope is the silent thing, the space before

robins sound out their warning, seet-seet,

and the space after.

Hope is the thing that fills a room

when flowers and cards have had their say,

when our frayed and complicated lives shout

thank you from windows, doors and yards,

then go quiet, everything forgiven.

It is the toll of a church bell across the brooding sky,

its deep tenderness over a town, over a world in crisis.

Then hope falls on our grieving, so let us grieve.

And when we are done and not before

it won’t seem outlandish to look

to where we are and see how just showing up

has carried us.

Maybe there is a fear of hope.

There is a fear of hope.

Yet hope is in the silence that saves you

on an impossible day, waiting for things to be well,

listening to everything holy between sounds.

Jackie McManus is a poet who splits her time in Washington and Wisconsin. She is the author of The Earthmover’s Daughter.