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Tuesday, April 5, 2022

National Poetry Month 2022- Foundlings and Wonderments #5


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 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,

 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:

Carol Varsalona said...

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.

Heidi Mordhorst said...

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!

Linda B said...

Love actually seeing Nasly & know she will "be" your poem, Carol. Good for her grit!

Mary Lee said...

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.)