Hope, Afterall.

By: J.R. Harringon

Poetry in the way the crisp wind ruffles the leaves of looming trees. A friend’s hand scratching behind your ear. Vibrations of passing cars spreading to your seat in the grass. It’s cool outside, so wear a flannel, but as the breeze calls you tie it around your waist.

Wind, wind, wind. You always loved it, the way it seemed always in poetry to be holding, touching, caressing. Wind winding through your legs like some affectionate critter. Windswept, fine strands of your hair shifting like spider-silk. The clouds darken, it might storm.

Cracked concrete home. Moss filling broken bits, procrastinated dry-wall, a house ripped apart and left that way since before you were born. The smell of the unfinished hallway, an old builder’s technique your dad muses upon—”A lost art form, now,” loss. Gravel lots taking away from the forest, concrete ramps taking away the forest, boxer-briefs hanging from a tree in the forest, socks left in the mud.

Light body, heavy mind. Staring down at the scale and begging the numbers to grow bigger. Trapped by yourself, stuck in bed until you feel close enough to death to decide “No, thank you, I’ll pass for now.” Getting up, easier than getting out, but when you make it to the treeline you’re grateful for your own stubborn mind. And the wind!

Coniferous, deciduous. Variety you’re glad for, these days. Imprisonment, your father telling of the meals he got when he was in, of days after work-programs spent reading whatever caught his eye at the library. A smart man, how did you think he was anything but? Laughing over spaghettification, musing on the way the moon moves so much faster when you look through a lens.

Pine-needles falling upon rough stone steps. Sitting in the pot your basil is in—too big too soon, root rot, root rot. Worry-wart, panicking over imaginary dangers. Laying in the grass and closing your eyes and hearing the music, the music! The way the wind calls to you, begs for closeness, begs for affection, attention! That song you used to sing to it in the mountains, when you managed that good bass note and it stilled and you nearly believed it was your doing; the wind could hear how you sang that song to soothe it.

Puddles in the hollows of rocks. Streamsong, windsong, birdsong. Rustle, rustle, a squirrel bounding over the path you take when you need to feel something. Try to sing along—there are no words. A hum, a vocalization, a crow, birdcalls you replicate and hurt your throat. The GRACK GRACK of a raven, the BRU-U-UM BRU-U-UM of a bullfrog.

How could you hope to put it into words? The moss on shed-bark, put it in your basket then return to sender; take it back where it came when you realize you don’t need it quite so much as bugs need shelter. Rough but loving, tough but giving. Pebbles taken from some distant-place, made landing-pads for slides at parks.

Sunlight, sprinkles. Rays falling against out-of-date orangey wood. Shining in your eyes, you grumble but it says it’s so glad you’ve returned, so glad you escaped. Drip drip drop, a fine misting on the floor in front of the open window. Wet socks, dry it up, trench-foot, trench-coat, won’t be long now before your winter-clothes come out of their box.

Each passing moment entwined with something. A hair shed, translucent on your shoulders, left like presents to prove your presence. Common thread, hay spun into gold. The ordinary made unordinary. Mundanity bringing beauty, beauty being mundanity. Are you the connector, stars in your eyes, or is it the world? This world, kind and unkind.

Every second a contradiction. It hurt you, this place, but it cradled you in its arms, too. It told you of love in the way the cold winter stung your ears. In the way the raindrops on your

glasses made walking without an umbrella dangerous. It told you of hate in the heat-mirages of summer days, in the shallow stream you thought would take you.

It blessed you, immunity. While everyone else had to watch for leaves in threes among the trees, you galloped off paths unscathed. Your brother followed you and came out with a terrible rash, your mother sighed and said “Guess it skipped you,” while she dabbed ointment on his ankles.

Wild thing, you wish you could stay. But the woods stand waiting for another day—until the one where they don’t, the one where the town decides to chop them down and develop something new alongside the creek. Now it’s there, now it’s gone. Sometimes you think if you don’t blink, nothing bad can happen.

Could you win a staring contest against the march of time? You may be damned but at least you try. Practice by staring out over the bridge, wondering if you look so pained as you feel. Could you survive the elements? Test it by laughing in a wet skirt as you twirl in the rain.

God may strike you down, but you may smile and get back up and dare Him to try it again. And again, over and over. How could you stay down, when the clouds whirl through the sky? How could you stay down, determined not to die?

Hope is a thing that you catch with both hands, and you are a persistence predator, human, cornering it in terrain you know well. Hope is an animal that doesn’t understand the gentle cooed reassurances you give. Hope only knows that you are big, and it feels smaller than it is. Hope is a bird who’s neck you snap out of mercy, it is blood you choke upon.

It is primal, second-nature. Something unique, what makes you. It is violent, and meek. What builds the world and what breaks it down, what keeps you going until you drown. Some little godthing, some beast of burden—a softness in your hands, a hardness on your face.