Wrestling with Hope
by
Radiance Angelina Petro

This ocean becomes a field,
that woman dies with a brown
wool scapular of Mary in her hands,
those tomato plants turn
spindly (that’s my fault),
no one solves the koan
of the deathbed,
I’m not sure what happens
to the big stories of the trees,
those children in the school yard
become invincible to sorrow,
people listening to the news
starve a little more,
everyone becomes an echo
of everyone else, and the silence
that follows holds
the bragging rights
of most wanted,
the new animals that appear
from the woods have no names,
and they intend to keep it that way,
every winnowing basket breaks
sending both wheat and chaff into the wind,
the sky turns into the world’s
Shroud of Turin.
How do I know these things?
I cut across the future
and ended up here,
and there’s so much more to tell–
so many things that will
bring joy to us all. But first–
I need to wrestle hope, I need to
try to pin it down, and we will fight
to the bitter end, and you can guess who wins.