"Hope Always Rising"

This photo has nothing to do with the poem -
This is an image of the Blue Ridge Pkway at 96% solar eclipse
...and the bee buzzing about this wild grape vine.

Please do not read this poem without reading the inspirational (current event) true story which inspired it.  "Devota, Valentine: "Everyday, We Are Blessed To Be Alive" by Jon Katz

Hope Always Rising

As a child I read fairytales, believed enduring wrongs
and injustices would always be rewarded if patient,
if good.  I lived on hope; hoped I'd be pretty one day,
hoped I'd have a fine wardrobe, find a handsome husband,
hoped ... oh so many frivolous things.

I never imagined walking over two thousand miles
in a war ravaged country, fleeing genocide,
a baby upon my back.

Never imagined plunging into a year's long hardship,
avoiding, not always successfully,
rape, hunger, bone weary exhaustion.

Never imagined passing by children
abandoned upon forest floor, starving, some already dead
as there was no one to save them.

Never imagined dodging bullets, fearing countless soldiers
and farmers (as food was scavenged from their fields),
not always escaping injury.

Never imagined "walking on bones".

As a child, and shamefully even an adult, my hopes
and prayers sometimes seemed fickle -
as if incorrectly answered I might read a book
instead of recite a nightly devotional.

But Devota never abandoned her Valentine,
her prayers never ceased, happiness not expected,
nor survival - although hope for freedom,
hope in perseverance, hope of a friendly border
did cling stubbornly to her belief in salvation.

Twenty years a U.N. refugee, waiting in Africa
for America to finally extend her hand;
and we are all the richer for Devota
and her wise and solemn "Grimm" fairytale.

Happily ever after, to quote Emerson
"...is to be useful, to be honorable,
to be compassionate, to have it make a difference
that you have lived and lived well".

Immigrants and refugees remind us
what's really important, the giving of ourselves,
each to the other; remembering what compassion means.

by Margaret Bednar, August 22, 2017


An interesting link from the History Channel:  Rwanda-genocide

This is linked with "dVerse - Poetics: Border"