Tonight's poem is a Found Poem. Blogspot is playing really ugly and keeps reformatting it, it looks fine in draft, but then is really weird published. I have taken it down and started over multiple times, but I just can't get it to work right. I apologize. This is the best I can do.
Pictured above is Nasly, one of my all-favorite, fully bilingual kiddos, with big dreams of attending Harvard and becoming a criminal lawyer. She's pictured above completing an internship with a lawyer.
"Hope"
Not
blind optimism.
Not
blind optimism.
Not ignoring
the enormity
of the task ahead
or the roadblocks
that stand
in our path.
Not
sitting
on the sidelines
or shirking from a fight.
Hope
that thing
inside us
that insists,
despite all evidence
to the contrary,
that something better
awaits us
if we have the courage
to reach for it,
if we have the courage
to work for it,
if we have the courage
to fight for it.
Hope is the belief
that destiny
will not be written
for us,
for us,
but by us,
by the men and women
who are not content
to settle for the world
as it is,
but rather
who have the courage
to remake the world
as it should be.
from Barack Obama's Iowa Caucus Speech
January 4, 2008
as quoted in The New York Times
4 comments:
Love your poem, Carol, especially these lines
Hope is the belief
that destiny
will not be written
for us,
but by us,
and the ending lines.
I have an invitation for slicers for NPM at my slice.Hope you join me.
Oh, I am sure that you picked out all the best essential parts of that speech, but most I love the embodiment of it that Nasly is, glowing out up there. Thank you for your long hard work uplifting those who want to write their own destiny, Carol!
Love actually seeing Nasly & know she will "be" your poem, Carol. Good for her grit!
This is my kind of hope -- strong, active, not sitting around waiting. Nasly is the very PICTURE of hope.
(Pro tip for making your poem look right: screenshot your draft and plunk it in your post as an image.)
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