Hope

By Marian Glaser ©

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Hope paddled her canoe, enjoying the lighted golden path

the sun had painted on the water. Each time she lifted a blade

drops fell back, each containing a miniature world.

She still remembered the hydra moving majestically,

standing on its head, then its bottom end, then

out of her microscope’s field of view. Now she was more aware

of the sparkle and completeness of each drop

even when separated from the larger whole of the lake.

The silence of this canoe had allowed her to get downwind and stop

to watch that black bear picking blueberries, conveying

each round morsel to his mouth with claws that could kill.

It had also allowed her to paddle up that creek

and see those purple wildflowers signaling the end of summer.

They had reminded her of her four-year old self

bending to smell that red rose in her grandmother’s garden.

She had felt that same immediacy then and last night making love.

Tom would be on shore, cooking the creel full of

perch he’d caught earlier over the fire they’d built.

Their two energies combined

into something beyond their single reach.

The new system was hard for them to understand

even though they’d both tried for the last five years.

Easier to follow other couples and let one dominate

while the other withered.

Today she had seen synergy everywhere

reaching a new level of complexity when

organs became arranged in patterns to

make plants, animals or humans.

She caught sight sometimes of a deeper system

in which she was as small as a sun-beam dancing mote.

Those glimpses were both humbling and exhilarating,

making her feel both infinitesimal

and part of a greater whole.

The mystics had tried to describe that

and had become as inarticulate as herself.

Now it was time to paddle home to Tom, to share

and savour that perch while they

watched the sun sink slowly,

adding beautiful colours to the clouds,

flowing from one shape to another,

creating a dynamic system

unreproducible by photographs or paintings.