Three Lisel Mueller Settings: Hope
Max Raimi
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 starry 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