Thinking poetically

There were times, buried long ago
among memories of schools and friends and the ashes of a life -
the slash-and-burn living of everyday scattering of
identity
- of hope.
I love that word. I wrap myself in it, my nose and eyes burn when
I see it. It chokes me, those four bulging letters,
Like the furies. I've almost murdered you.
Almost.
Remembering a car ride with my father, when it felt like he lost hope.
Or maybe it was the first time I noticed.
Driving me home from something, somewhere, and answering
my probing about his new job with that soft calm serious voice
I'm not interested in a promotion,
that soft calm serious voice again,
that stuff doesn't matter to me anymore.
and again, battering at me with calmness,
i'm too old to care about that now.
too old.
That soft calm voice was a corpse to me.
My own hope weakened that day, my hope
felt a little chest pain and ignored it
That my novels - those aborted children sitting headed with no trunks, no bodies, no real flesh or meaning and certainly no life -
sat meaningless unfinished in cold computer-memory corners
my memories and muscles fading, collapsing.
Hope - that great hope that bulged from under my eyelids, that crammed my guts full of brilliant strong words like sackfuls of expanding grain bursting and breaking my body open to pour out the fecund language of hope and love and meaning

I hope, but that hope is weakening as other things weaken, my grip my memory my strength
I hope, but that hope knows limits that before were but the medieval constraints of small nervous minds
I hope, but that hope knows that sometimes sleep and food and money are needed to live and keep on
I hope, but that hope knows that time is short and fleeing fast
I hope, but that hope knows its weakness.
It is a wise, weak hope.
I hope.