in this poem

Today is April 30, so this is the last poem for 2020. Thank you for being here with me, friends. I love you. See you next year.

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
     it shakes sleep from its eyes
     and drops from mushroom gills,
          it explodes in the starry heads
          of dandelions turned sages,
               it sticks to the wings of green angels
               that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
     it lives in each earthworm segment
     surviving cruelty,
          it is the motion that runs
          from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
               it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
               of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

—Lisel Mueller (1924-2020), "Hope" from Alive Together, 1996, although I got this poem from Garrison Keillor's Good Poems (Penguin, 2003), a collection of poems from The Writer's Almanac. I didn't know when I decided to close the month with this poem that Lisel Mueller died in February (at age 96), but it does feel a little serendipitous, in its own way. Thank you for the poetry, Lisel. ♥