Hope is a thing with Feathers

It is my year anniversary of blogging. Which means that one year ago I was sitting in the kitchen of Butter knife Estates, a House of Heroes and Thad was pestering me to start blogging. So I did. Good to give into peer pressure sometimes.

One year later I am sitting on the marble floor of the Daytona Beach Hilton, having already read a total of 750 AP English Language tests, watching the rain hit the ocean and watching brown Pelicans fly in the sky. And though I have a shed a tear or two for the future of America in the hands of these callow youths who can't write "worth beans" as a new southern friend said today---I am feeling strangely hopeful. (notice how incredibly long this sentence is)

As I watch the pelicans fly, I think of a poem by Emily Dickinson, herein enclosed:

Hope
Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune--without the words,

And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little bird

That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,

And on the strangest sea;

Yet, never, in extremity,

It asked a crumb of me.

These lovely birds so clumsy on land, ridiculous even, suddenly take off and become the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, arcing across the sky in pairs or groups, their nobility tangible to even such as I. That is what hope looks like to me: a brown pelican, noble, graceful, lovely, strong, awkward at times but indomitable.