Hope, poem #11, updated

Update: So, math was never my strong suit. Maybe I should figure it out numerically rather than in words. 40-12=28. 28/11=2.5454545. That's two and a half poems per month. I was figuring I had another poem in the back of my head and rounded to a dozen. I can surely see how I gave the accurate impression that math ain't my thang.

Hhmmm, I need to get kicking on my 40 by 40 quest. I've got 11 months left to memorize 38 poems; that is close to three and a half poems a month.

Here is the latest poem I've chosen. I hope you enjoy it.

Hope
by Lisel Mueller

It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.

It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.

It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.

It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another,
it is in this poem, trying to speak.