HOPE Just Needs A Good Night’s Sleep

Hope just needs a good night’s sleep

and there it is in the morn!

 Magically/naturally

like a crocus through snow in spring.

   Or occasionally

Hope just needs a good old cry

like rain releasing heaviness from clouds,

water for new life,

allowing sunlight through

Faith requires effort.

Hope “happens,” by

  allowing

     things to be

 just as they are.

To do “Faith,” one positions stiffly in one direction, like a soldier.

Faith is an act of mind, dependent on

  what it sees, or imagines wildly.

Hope relies on nothing

but gut feeling.  “Which direction would be better?

Hope senses what “better” feels like.

Hope sees one flower in desert snow and throws its arms around it, refusing

to look at the desert, the long winter….

Faith is Controlled Hope;

its only strength is Experience.

Reliable Experience.

   I have quite a bit of Faith in vitamins and chocolate

         and exercise,

         rest,

         and friendship.  To me,

all true Love comes down to Friendship.

but that’s another subject.  If

there is a “God,”  Somewhere,

I would have most faith in That Being

If It were like a Friend to me.

  Various ideas

I was told about “God” have not worked reliably,

though chocolate has.

Hope is the same as taking breath. 

It’s the willingness to go on living

rather than, in one way or another,

refusing any more.   It’s the choice to continue

getting up each morning,

   trying whatever, taking one more step.   Hope feels the empty stomach

and chooses to respond. 

Hope faces the same old same-old

still willing one more try.

Hope faces utter darkness

and chooses breath.

Hope would rather feel pain

than nothing.  A soldier told me once

“If you feel pain, you know you’re still alive….”

Faith wavers under pain,

cowers in the darkness, in the storm.  It

rises, falls, with weather.

 Hope

only begs for rest.

And then, it’s there again! –

like a spring of water, bubbling up

through thaw.  Just there,

ready to go like an old car, a horse;

“Sure let’s try once more,” Hope says.

And Hope and Heart join hands, and on they march,

  and on and on and on and on

-Marti Matthews, August 26, 2020

 On the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, finally giving women the right to vote!

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