Where I Was Never Giving Up

If you look closely at my hands while they tie a shoe, hope will be there.

If you see me scraping the burnt meatloaf from the glass pan, you will see a little hope there, too.

The page and the pen I came to, there lies my hope, my love.

In the kiss, planted in passing across gold field of hair, hope.
The fact that all the socks in our drawers match: hope.

The seed catalogs, the balls of yarn, the basket of mending, the frozen tomatoes clicking like pool balls in the deep freeze, the books on my shelves I haven't read yet, the little notes I write to friends here and there, the deep breath I take before I enter the room, new packages of guitar strings, dirt in the pots, a broom that encounters every inch of the house again and again, the straw fingers of a domestic lover: hope.

The index cards filling with finds for our "basket of tricks" and the slips of paper in my Blessing Jar, the prayer written and taped beneath the kitchen table, under the bed mattress, that the laundry is done every Monday, the dishes at the end of the day, that it will take two years to read the Word in its entirety: hope.

Shoes paired and stacked on the rack in the closet, walk together in hope.

That the sunset then held me to the floor, but lifts me now.

And I can hear the crickets, in frozen January night dreaming of themselves in July.