What Is Hope? Poem by Lonnie Hicks

Never was a larger word
than Hope;
all dreams reside there;

In the Future,
resides our desires laid bare;
our Now wants to go there
our Past wants to be washed away
or celebrate there-
inside Hope's Cathedral.

Hope is the Promised Land.
both Means
and Destination.

But, what good does Hope do
if it goes away
after
what we hope for comes true?

Is there not another dream then
that Hope must then fulfill?

But, here we ask
what then is Hope itself?

Is it my Expectation Confident
that what I want
will come true?

Is it merely that Leap of Faith
that all that currently ails
will dissipate
in my hoped-for future state?

If all is risked on this single word
then we must know exactly
what it is;
for me
what is Hope's meaning for me?

Well the Expectation idea
that Hope is the confidence that
want I want will come true
is too much for me.
I don't have that kind of confidence
do you?

Nothing for me is ever for sure
not even Hope
itself
because, as we all know, Hope can
give way to Black Despair where
by definition Hope has gone
and fled.

Since no one can read our future states
we bob and weave between
hoping for hope
but fearing despair.

I rather like the Leap of Faith Idea
where we all make
the assumption that actions now,
will in future state,
pay off
and Hope will fulfill the expectations
we have placed there.

But note,
it is all too true that Hope
then is fully based
on Leaps of Faith
and then we ask
faith in what?

If all of Human-Kinds Hopes
distill from Human-Kinds Dreams
then upon what faith did cavemen
dream of a better world?

Upon a pagan God,
restless shadows on the cave wall,
incantations said and made?

But the pointed point here is
that our ancestors did have
blind faith in something which
caused them to feel that dreams
they dreamed
had some Hope of becoming Real
and that Hope
had to involve for them an enormous leap
beyond what they could see
in their lives then.

So Leaping then is what we do
even where there is no evidence
in reality that our dreams
however fervently held
will ever actually come true.

So Hope we see
is bound up with
Mystery
and Leapings
into Voids
with nothing more
than the belief
that in dreaming
it
we can make it come true-
be brought into reality.

Rather like writing a poem.

Humm, the moral here:
Nothing can be done
unless one
has the dream
and Hope
to make it so
and by hoping bring it
into reality.

This seems to be
the true History
of Human-Kind
at its best
and
at its
worse.