“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –
So wrote Emily Dickinson more than 100 years ago. Over the years people have questioned what this agoraphobic spinster was hopeful about. It’s a question that still resonates today — where do you find hope when everything is stacked against you.Detroit-based poet Jamaal May explores hope in its many forms in his 2016 collection “The Big Book of Exit Strategies.” Feathers, wings and birds appear often in these poems that spring from hunger and devastation and racism and all the other issues that come from living in poverty in the wealthiest country in the world.
I drive through the neighborhoods he writes of, their abandoned homes, the trash-filled streets, the decay make me think how sad it must be to have no choice but to grow up in a place so bleak. Still, May finds hope. That’s a lesson for all of us.
For Detroit
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.
Shelf Improvement 