Two poems: The Spirit of Hope To live means to hope…poetry is the language of hope. To hope beyond Hope Is to aspire to the impossible And yet – to the not yet possible. To trust beyond trust In the ditch of despair Is an orientation of the spirit, A dimension of the soul – The power of awakening, The power of resurrection, The power of rebirth. To attend to the other with love Is devotion to life itself, The dawn of divine radiance Brightening the world, Redeeming our motives, Purifying our intent, Cleansing our hearts, Fortifying our courage To stand firm In the swirling turbulence with those Cast adrift in the maelstrom, Isolated in frigid fear. Coming into being Is coming into Being, Tenderly touching one another Drawing close In resonant empathy, Co-creating Peace from within, Inspiring beauty, Sowing seeds of hope In the fertile soil Of cosmic Spring, Dreaming forward The vision of a New Earth, Cohering in co-creative communities Coming together. ‘We’ is no longer Us “We’re driving back”, she wrote, But ‘we’ is no longer us, They are ‘we’ while ‘We’ used to be us Sharing life together. Now, it’s they who go for walks, And sit by the fire in the evening. ‘We’ is an echo from the past, Haunting the present, Creeping furtively Into conscious awareness – ‘We’ is no longer us. The reverberations of ‘we’ Grow gradually fainter, It’s a melancholy moment Of nostalgia For past happiness, For affectionate touch, A twinge of sadness Stirring in my tender heart.