This week we Need a Poem

A Little Hope
I held the hydrangeas under the hose
and watched a few white crab spiders
skitter out of the interlocking blossoms,
and down my hand. Untouched by
their beauty, by the amplified buzzing
of a bumblebee rolling inside the pollen-
rich cup of a windflower, I was tired
of news unspooling everything that’s wrong
with the world, weary of endless lies.
Not even the sheen of green feathers
on an Anna’s hummingbird hovering in the air
near my face, staring into my eyes,
could lift me out of my melancholy.
But I’ve learned to preserve such moments,
keep them like plums in a jar so that
I can open them again later and feast on
what I was not yet ready to receive.
I knew that simply by arranging
the hydrangeas, those cloudbursts of pink
and white, in a vase on the bureau
I was also rearranging some things
inside myself, placing a little hope
and care beside the despair.

                  James Crews