Hope Street Poem by Joe Bisicchia

Got so much to do, places to go, people to meet, barrels to burn, but maybe life's sweet as waiting on Hope Street and watching sun drop behind empty parking lot next to closed bowling alley and closed barber shop where swirl has stopped to sleep.

And maybe it's sweet as sun's return trip via a boomerang off the moon, waiting on Hope lifting your cold arms stretched wide, allowing rays of moonlight rise and fall and tickle your firm fingertips. But sometimes sun and moon are just too hard to see, let alone welcome with open arms.

I mean, I'm perfect example. Here I am now looking up and can't see a thing. Until looking closer. Awe I see is vastness, yet not emptiness, but awe now falling upon my lips. I taste it as sweet refreshment upon my tongue like some kind of shown and shared salvation despite all condemnation, as if this street too knows communion, as if Hope can never be forgotten.

This is far more than only snow. This is the manna I learned from mom. She's long home now above the clouds. This is proof, even if unseen to others, even if to others I'm only homeless, numberless and numb upon bench with a paralysis of the broken barber shop pole with no rising swirl, and all the world may not remember who I am still heaven will. And apparently does. I know where I am from. Maybe this is like being home awe along.


Published by pacificREVIEW: A West Coast Arts Review Annual,2019