Arts Alive San Antonio

How do you define HOPE?
Sheila Black’s poem and the painting by artist Jay Dalvi offer their inspiring interpretations. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “We must accept finite disappointment but we must never lose infinite hope.”

Hope
By Sheila Black

It is treacherous like picking your way across
a field with bits of glass or wire
hidden under high grass. Today the clerk
behind the Plexiglass telling me not to worry;
she does not mind if I step closer.
Eyes of strangers behind masks feel like connection,
after returning to the cool of the house, dim because
the shades are drawn against the sun.
It is all of a piece – this not belonging—the tar under
our feet melting, the basil wilting by 10 am
unless I step out to sprinkle it with water. The
baby likes to do this, holding the full plastic cup
so carefully even though for her it is so heavy
she can’t help tilting it a little. I remember lighting
candles in wind for some long ago child’s party.
Outside on a picnic bench, the image of us,
bending over, striking the match, trying again
each time it sputtered out. Today, four hundred
dead, a thousand new admissions to the hospital.
We will make the baby cupcakes with frosting
colored pink by raspberries. We will blow
on her neck to cool her in the hot still of evening.
Then we will draw the shades, light
our small lamps and sing her slowly, softly
to sleep. Hope, which wakes like she does,
endlessly eager for each new morning.

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Sheila Black is the author of four critically acclaimed poetry collections, including her most recent “Wen Kroy” (Dream Horse Press). Jay Dalvi is represented by saatchiart.com