Wordy Saturday With Wild Woman : the Places That Heal Us

A POEM ON HOPE 

It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old, 
for hope must not depend on feeling good 
and there’s the dream of loneliness at absolute midnight. 
You also have withdrawn belief in the present reality 
of the future, which surely will surprise us, 
and hope is harder when it cannot come by prediction 
anymore than by wishing. But stop dithering. 
The young ask the old to hope. What will you tell them? 
Tell them at least what you say to yourself.

Because we have not made our lives to fit 
our places, the forests are ruined, the fields, eroded, 
the streams polluted, the mountains, overturned. Hope 
then to belong to your place by your own knowledge 
of what it is that no other place is, and by 
your caring for it, as you care for no other place, this 
knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. 
It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask 
for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land
and your work.  Be still and listen to the voices that belong 
to the stream banks and the trees and the open fields.

Find your hope, then, on the ground under your feet. 
Your hope of Heaven, let it rest on the ground underfoot. 
The world is no better than its places. Its places at last 
are no better than their people while their people 
continue in them. When the people make 
dark the light within them, the world darkens.

–Wendell Berry

In these gloomy times, when it is difficult to hold onto hope, this poem speaks to us about what is solid beneath our feet: the world, our place in it, where we put our roots down, where our hearts belong.

For your challenge, write a poem about the place or places you love, the places that heal you, the ones that call to you and wrap their arms around you. Where do you go to replenish your stores of hope? What does it sing to you?

Use specifics to make the place come alive for us. It can be a garden, a forest glen, a tree, a porch swing, the shore, or a special room or home that is refuge and sanctuary, where all is safety and warmth - a place where you go to soothe your spirit. Through your words, let us see what you see, feel what you feel while you are there. Show us how you care for this place, and how this caring expands to caring about the survival of all places, all people.

Tell us what you take away with you when you leave, and how your special place on the planet allows you to keep hope alive, for the world and its many creatures. Honour the earth through the celebration of this place.

No rules: use any form you wish. Then link up. And please do visit the offerings of your fellow poets. I look forward to reading some poems of love for this beautiful planet, and the places on it that you love most.