Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

Hope

We have the poem.
The loveless soul.
The peach flower,
heavy shoulders,
and eyes.
We have the sea,
and the day,
and the rhyme.
It is not my face
shining
dead moon
or the eighty-five
crisis
I have survived
that leads me to shout,
“Now is the time.”
It is the one in the mirror looking back at me,
the one that greets me on my birthday.
The one that asks, “Where did the time go?”
For too long now,
I have waxed poetic
trying to stir up spirits
and corpses
when really there were only
dead rabbits
left behind.
Now, I must forget those
and move forward with all the ferocity of a young
sweetheart
in search of his love.
Now I must run,
throw off sparks,
and unhappiness,
(so much of it created in my mind),
and let
hope
be my flower.
There is still time
to live.