So this is hope
                 After Ted Kooser

by Patricia Phillips-Batoma 


Lit by a single half-moon window,
a throng of disparate objects
lines every inch of garage shelf space.

Their indistinct shapes bear down on me
like the sound and fury
of a conclave of despots.
 
Is this clutter really what summons
the mournful strains
jabbing from the shadows?

Solving that riddle is like
trying to paint the shape
of gathering clouds.
 
A baggy piece of this puzzle
catches my eye. White, plastic, pillowy,
a sack of Asiatic lily bulbs.
 
After their delayed arrival last fall,
perhaps it was too late to plant.
Or was it that illness, other sirens,
 
one pursuit toppling another,
that caused them to drift
inside this debris field?

Between my fingers, they crackle and groan,
dare me to settle the question of whether
life still exists inside their papery hulls.

So this is hope. Here in a dingy space,
softly suggesting I might still find
flowers inside.

Its presence so unobtrusive until
it shoulders its way out of the cacophonic din,
unscathed from years of living
 
between war and peace,
thistles and lilies.


* * * * *

Patricia Phillips-Batoma is a writer and teacher who lives in Illinois. She has published poems in Skylight 47, An Capall Dorcha, The New Verse News, Off Course, Plants and Poetry and Spilling Cocoa over Martin Amis.