Flipped Friday: Hope

What is it? Writers aspire to describe things in ways that give readers  an Aha! moment  - a new phrase or word that flips our expectations and makes us go, “Yes, that’s exactly what an orange looks, tastes, feels, smells like.” Post pictures, text, video (or whatever) of a person, place, or thing to help us look at it in a new way.

Today: Hope is a thing with feathers…

Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets. It was not a fast and furious love affair. Her work is not always easy to understand. But if you are patient and you read it several times, her words sink into your soul.

A couple of years ago my friend Laurie – who is that person that always gives you the perfect gift you didn’t even know you needed – gave me a necklace charm with a snip of one of Emily’s poems. It’s still my favorite piece of jewelry because it reminds me how fragile hope is, how necessary it is in the direst time, and how hard it is to put into words what we are hoping for. Note: the brackets are entirely my interpretation of the poem.

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Hope is the thing with feathers
by Emily Dickinson

Hope is the thing with feathers [think of a bird - flitty, fragile and FREE]

That perches in the soul, [those same characteristics are how hope lives in us]

And sings the tune without the words, [sometimes we don't even know what we are hoping for]

And never stops at all, [even when we think we've lost hope, it's still there singing]

And sweetest in the gale is heard; [hope is most necessary in the face of a storm/bad times]

And sore must be the storm [how awful are the bad times]

That could abash the little bird [that can make us ashamed to hope]

That kept so many warm. [when before the storm the hope kept us going]

I’ve heard it in the chillest land, [hope happens in all places, times]

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity, [But never, even in the most extreme times]

It asked a crumb of me. [has hope ever asked anything in return]

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Sigh. I love this poem.