Sarah Arvio – Ⅲ

Hope 

 

 

 

 

I said this: would you give me back my hope

if I suffered hard enough, if I tried.

That hip-swinging hallelujah of hope,

 

that hip-hip-hooray we were tsalking about,

raying outward from the hip or the heart,

holistic, holy—those were all high things—

 

hyper-radical and hyper-real,

that gospel of helix and radiance.

Hail me, hail me, here I am alive,

 

falling from the lips of the lioness,

lambent and loved, gamboling like a lamb,

having gambled all my griefs and lost them.

 

Game of the gods, gamine of the cards,

inhaler of hashish and helium.

Here was the hub of the halo again,

 

the hub or nub of the halo or heart,

and the trope of turning to say hello;

we always said it “helio-hello.”

 

Hello to the little girl and lambkin,

garrulous, hilarious, all grown up,

nibbling on nothing and feeling okay,

 

and sweetly holding hands with the harpist,

turning toward the sun, turning toward the sound

–my warp of the world, my harp of the heart—

 

sounding like myself, as I always sound,

snappy and stylish and too sonorous,

a little savage and a little sweet.