Songbird Named Hope

I spoke with a bird

who had known the world,

before I even knew there was a world to know.

The bird flying swiftly from the moon to Earth

perched itself on a tree near my bedroom window.

Now, I knew what dreams were and I had known the bite of Life’s nightmares;

but I never experienced the beauty of a dream in sleep.

The bird came to me

and sang low and sweet.

Waking me to a song I had never heard before.

Because if I had heard this song,

I would have gone to bed singing.

Not a song from my mouth.

A song from a body that holds a soul,

a soul awakened.

It was a song so sweet that I did not merely feel happy. I felt altogether more. As if my body opened up, needing to be a part of the world beyond my bedroom walls.

I asked the bird, “How do you sing a song so sweet, when you've seen the very worst of the world?”

The bird, before flying away to see the world yet again, sang to me,

“Because I have also seen the very BEST of it. And ‘Hope is the thing with feathers…’ remember that, little one.”

I went to bed that night, and I dreamed for the first time in my whole life.

And it was filled with feathers, and it was filled with songs,

but most of all it was filled with Hope.

--Quote from Emily Dickinson's poem "Hope is the thing with feathers (254)"