The Power of Hope

Hope prevails, not when
all things work in your
favor, but when the
evidence against
hope overshadows
visible signs
that natural
solutions may
be uncovered.
I am sure
the long night
of waiting
one day
will be
done.

Written for this week’s Poetics at d’Verse, for which the theme is INVISIBLE.

Our host Merrill challenged us to write about the invisible. I chose to write about hope, an invisible force that keeps people alive during the harshest of conditions. I’ve been reading the book Where Is God When It Hurts, and I found there that many of the survivors of the Holocaust, many prisoners of war, and many patients dealing with long-term illnesses will tell you that what kept them going was hope: hope of release, hope of healing, hope of life after death. Others, when they lost hope, lost their will to live. I too can attest to the power of hope, for it brought me from the jaws of death when I was struggling with bipolar depression. And hope continues to keep me alive—not just alive, but thriving. Hope is invisible. It is not a wish, but an expectancy, waiting for something you know will happen, even though you don’t know when it will happen.

I chose to couch this week’s poem in a Diminishing Pentaverse. While I am waiting for hope to appear, my poem is slowly disappearing. It’s like I’m losing sight of the words I can see to gain sight of that which the eye cannot see.

Scansion:
Diminishing Pentaverse
origin unknown
A pentaverse is a 5-line poem with 5 syllables per line.
Therefore, the Diminishing Pentaverse begins with a stanza having 5 lines of 5 syllables, and decreases down to 1 line of 1 syllable.
Total length: 15 lines
Syllabic structure: 5-5-5-5-5, 4-4-4-4, 3-3-3, 2-2, 1
Unrhymed
Note: There is also a Diminishing Hexaverse, which is 21 lines in length.

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