We've stayed in many towns called Hope,
or New Hope,
we've nibbled cup cakes in their tea shops,
we've drifted on their canals.
We've posed for photos by their old cannons,
their Mennonite stars.
In inns, we've dangled our legs
from their high four-poster beds,
admired their lace canopies,
soaked in their claw-footed tubs.
In Hope, we dawdled over breakfast,
porridge and Postum, fresh eggs from the barn.
In New Hope we took a steam train,
in Hope we petted llamas,
in Hope we got cash
from a bank made of Huguenot stone.
In Hopetown, night fell at four,
in New Hope at seven
and in Hope at nine.
It was full summer,
the trees filled with fruit and a racket of insects.
It was a sound like synapses in the cortex, firing,
or like Salvador, the jungle there,
a sound from Esperanza.
And it was dark, dark.
The only light came from the horses,
the white horses in their pasture,
and the fireflies flickering around them,
a light there and not there,
here and not here, yet reliable.
In Hope, we leaned on a wood fence
and looked at white horses in the dark
and waited in confidence
for the next and the next spark.
(from Here from Away, CustomWords, 2003)