In preparing for “Meeting 2021 with Gratitude, Hope, and Intention,” a brief workshop that I’ll be offering tomorrow, I came across a poem that I’d written in the early spring of last year when we’d lost 46,000 to COVID-19.
Today it’s official, 400,000 have now lost their lives to COVID, and it strikes me that while there are over 350,000 reasons more to despair then when I wrote the poem, we also have so very many reasons to hope.
What Gives Me Hope
“The old Maple outside of my window has started to bud,
And the loons have begun their lonely calling.
There have been muskrats spotted coming out of their dens,
and the red-winged blackbirds have returned from southern skies.
Spring keeps her promise once again this year,
that what appears dormant or even dead
can rise again.
And yet not one of the more than 46,000 Americans
lost to COVID in these last days of winter
will be returning.
Still, while the death toll rises,
from Florida to Thailand
endangered turtles have built more nests
on the beach than in the past 20 years
and dolphins swim
in the canals of Venice.
Italians serenade one another from their balconies
and stuffed animals, candles and images of rainbows
are placed in windows for the world’s children.
Hundreds of Thousands in Europe
form a volunteer army sworn to
soothe, feed and comfort both neighbors and strangers.
And though COVID-19 makes it harder to breathe,
satellite images reveal that folks
in Italy and India can breathe easier.
A Spanish Doctor pleads for letters
to encourage and soothe the ill
and the dying,
And to his amazement,
tens of thousands of them come pouring in.
Young children in cities who have never seen the night stars
gaze up in wonder at them now.
Coyotes wander down a Chicago street.
And on the 50th anniversary of Earth Day
a young Indian boy who has never ventured beyond his village
encounters the Himalayas, long obscured by smog, for the first time.
And so, while I sit in the dark holding despair in one hand,
as the days lengthen and the warmth returns,
I cradle hope in the other.
Tammie Fowles
Spirituality, Therapy, and the Good Life 