By William Derge
I don’t know about Hope having feathers,
If it does, it’s a small bird that suddenly
appears on the bird feeder outside my bedroom window
and dips its tiny beak almost unperceptively
into an array of seeds. And when it senses
my presence in a vain attempt to get a better view,
it flies as quickly away.
I know that Hope will not be captured,
even shuns being observed and studied,
and especially understood.
It has its own agenda to survive,
has its own existence outside of my need for it,
will not let me possess it or even find its nest,
however much I look for it.
It will not be caged or cajoled into intimacy.
It doesn’t care about my pains, my doubts,
my confessions of what I have done or failed to do,
is free of me, is free to visit me as it will,
is as natural as air and water and nourishment,
is free to leave and return or never to leave or return,
to sing as it pleases, to be silent as it pleases.
William Derge’s poems have appeared in Negative Capability, The Bridge, Artful Dodge, Bellingham Review, and many other publications. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee and the winner of the Knightsbridge Prize and Rainmaker Award. He has received honorable mentions in contests sponsored by The Bridge, Sow’s Ear, and New Millennium, among others, and has been awarded a grant by the Maryland State Arts Council. His work has appeared in several anthologies of Washington poets.
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