November

90 minutes left before we turn to November and I, like so many, approach it with fear and trembling. I’ve fallen flat kicking Lucy’s football so many times I know to approach it warily. It seems incredible that any humane reaction to the antics of the last two years would not finally lead to the turn in the tide that we so desperately need and we all so desperately deserve, even those who keep shooting themselves in the foot and think someone else made them lame.

Where to turn in these moments of great import? In moments of clarity, I know it’s not the pollsters, the pundits, the politicians, but the poets. “Hope is a thing with feathers” came to mind without really knowing this poem and I looked it up and it helps.

If the lying and cheating and gerrymandering and voter suppression and shabby values and ignorance and apathy win at the polls yet again, there’s no way to avoid feeling the blow to this fragile bird of hope. But I know I’ll be obliged to keep listening to its song, the one that “never stops at all.” If the right thing happens—and how fervently I hope it does!—I vow to keep the momentum going and join in the chorus of hope’s song.

November, I want to arrive at Thanksgiving with genuine thanks for the intelligence, awakeness, awareness, courage and determination of my fellow Americans.

May it be so.

May it be so.

May it be so.

And now, here’s Emily Dickinson.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -

That perches in the soul -

And sings the tune without the words -

And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -

And sore must be the storm -

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -

And on the strangest Sea -

Yet - never - in Extremity,

It asked a crumb - of me.