How to be hopeful

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. The most you can do is live inside that hope, running down its hallways, touching the walls on both sides.

HOPE: AN OWNER’S MANUAL

Look, you might as well know, this thing

is going to take endless repair: rubber bands,

crazy glue, tapioca, the square of the hypotenuse.

Nineteenth-century novels. Heartstrings, sunrise:

all of these are useful. Also, feathers.

To keep it humming, sometimes you have to stand

on an incline, where everything looks possible;

on the line you drew yourself. Or in

the grocery line, making faces at a toddler

secretly, over his mother’s shoulder.

You might have to pop the clutch and run

past all the evidence. Past everyone who is

laughing or praying for you. Definitely you don’t

want to go directly to jail, but still, here you go,

passing time, passing strange. Don’t pass this up.

In the worst of times, you will have to pass it off.

Park it and fly by the seat of your pants. With nothing

in the bank, you’ll still want to take the express.

Tiptoe past hte dogs of the apocalypse that are sleeping

in the shade of your future. Pay at the window.

Pass your hope like a bad check.

You might still have just enough time. To make a deposit.

— Barbara Kingsolver