Hope is a celestial arc along which
We climb to Love itself. Love, that wholeness,
Will call us from time to time. The hitch
Is that we lose our way when we focus
On the fakes and frauds and near replicas
Of the song that is life. Lipstick’s not hope!
Nor is believing up is down. Find a
Better way to hold your telescope
So you see with your heart Love’s distant star
Pulsing, and calling; beckoning you home.
Its wholeness reaches under life’s brute scars
So without a word your heart knows shalom:
The peace the world can’t give nor take away,
Even when terror reigns and skies are gray.
-Allegra Jordan, 2020. Photo taken over northern Italy on 14 DEC 2019, seven years after the Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre. The sonnet was written after conversations about “What is hope?” with Scarlett Lewis and Jerry Alena, of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement in March 2020.