Out on a Limb

Hope is the thing with feathers.

I am not now, nor have I ever been, a big fan of the poetry of Miss Dickinson.  It isn’t that I don’t see its value; it just doesn’t burn its imagery into my brain housing group the way Mr. Jarrell’s, Mr. Whitman’s, or Mr. Yeats’ does.

So it is understandably surprising when the opening line to her poem (#314) came up in three separate conversations, with three different people, in my life last week.  By the third occasion, I was well into my weisenheimer mode and I responded that Miss Emily had left out the part about the beak, the talons, and the crapping on the windshield.

I may have been more accurate than I intended.  After Pandora had let loose all the war, hate, disease, and disaster; hope could be lifted out of the box.  It isn’t necessary for any of its fellow box captives, but it is the only way any of them can be overcome. Without adversity, there is no need, no function, for hope.  They are forever bound together.

The thing with feathers perches there, singing, on the limb.  Its song coaxes us farther out, away from the trunk, where the notes are clearer and the fall so much more likely.

Annemarie