Hope is the thing with feathers. And if you think that means a bird, and only a bird, well . . . you may be in for a despondent winter.
Especially if you wait at your window for it, telling yourself — and you are SO literal — that the birds just won’t come. Or the ones that do are not good enough. Not exactly the size or color you wanted. Then there is just gray. Andirons. Shackles. Fog. And bittersweet righteousness. You knew it was bleak. No feathers, no hope. No illusion.
But hope IS the thing with feathers.
Turn away from the fog, close your eyes, and he comes through the mossy forest of your heart. Darling Pegasus, shining light. Wrapping his gardenia-scented wing around you, chuffing warm breath on your forehead, asking “Where do you want to fly to today?”
Or maybe Elephant comes wearing an orange feather boa. She’s moving those logs for you now, tossing them aside. No more obstacles, you swing your head back and forth in harmony with hers, to — there!
Clarinets! Bells! Joining the brass band, funking, jiving its way down the street, marching along on a rainbow carpet of Mardi Gras Indian chief feathers, dribbled from costumes sewed with love and pride and, yes! Hope.
Hope is indeed a thing with feathers.
Just ask a fly-fisherman, crouched, on a dark night, over his little table. The beam of his headlamp trained on a hook, his thread, and just the tiniest amount of turkey feather fluff. In all his years, this is the most delicate morsel to be offered to the trout yet. He can hardly await the dawn and the chance to wade into the bubbling, icy brook. To reach his arm back, then forward, then a flick — and then it’s up to the universe and the appetites of fish.
On that same Sunday, you might sniff a warm scent on the air. Turn away from your skeptic’s window and open the closet. Reach for the box on the top shelf with the dusty pink ribbon. Inside is Aunt Judy’s hat, that mountain of turquoise peacock-feathered craziness. The one she wore when she awaited the train bringing Uncle Dick home from the war, her fiancée. How long since their last kiss and yet how short, compared to the length and breadth of the marriage stretched before them.
Yes. Hope is, most certainly, the thing with feathers.
(inspired by a poem by Emily Dickinson, and by paintings by Lynne Taetzsch)
